The Ravagers' Guide To Getting Laid
by bunyipbabe
Summary: Kraglin and Yondu are struggling through their vague attempt at a relationship - although don't call it that, unless you want an arrow in the eye. Then Peter happens... Five times Kraglin and Yondu really wanted to bone each other but Peter was an oblivious cockblocking little shit, and once where they managed it. Story copied complete from AO3 with author's permission!
1. Night Shift

**Hi all! This is a complete fic that I wrote over at AO3, where I'm Write_Like_An_American. I've decided to put it up on in the hopes of reaching more viewers – apologies about the hideously old account; it's one that I inherited from a friend. The other fics are ones we worked on together, and to be frank, are fairly abysmal, mostly by lieu of being ANCIENT. So this should (hopefully!) by of a higher quality. Please read, review, enjoy~**

* * *

By the end of the first day, Yondu's determined that Terrans are good for precisely three things – gettin' into trouble, somehow gettin' out of trouble, and pumping daft beats into their ears so that they can't hear you while you're explaining that _the engine room ain't for brats to go pokin' their noses in, you listenin' to me, boy? You'll send us wheelin' straight into an asteroid belt and then where will you be? Fucking frozen solid with your eyeballs poppin' out, that's where. Now_ look _at me when I'm talkin' to you, boy, or I'll rip those headphones off and eject 'em out an airlock._

By the end of the first week, Yondu has added two more skills to the boy's meagre list. The first is (to his disgust) crying. Crying that no matter of threats will annul. And Yondu's got a lot of threats: ranging from the banal – _the boys have been gettin' hungry again, so you'll hush it if you don't wanna be next on the menu_ – to the inventive – _if you don't shut yer yap I'll slather you in syrup and leave you in scoutin' distance of a spacewasp comb_. Holding upside down and shaking, his usual preferred tactic, has been conclusively proven to make matters worse.

Okay, so perhaps it's not all that surprising. Yondu doesn't know much about Terrans. But they seem a fairly sentimental species – one look at the amount of lovey dovey drivel on the kid's darn mixtape could have told him that much. And anyway, he ain't _heartless_. Being abducted by aliens not an hour after your carrier's death would merit a tear or two even by his standards.

But honestly. It's been seven solars. And this is getting ridiculous.

If mama Quill's meant to be looking down on her little _Star Lord_ from where she sits sipping macchiatos, or whatever it is she's supposed to be doing when she's partying with The Spirit In The Sky (this being the extent of what Yondu's bothered to learn about Terran religion; and this through no will of his own, but rather because the kid's been blasting that soundtrack on repeat since he arrived)… Well, she ain't gonna want to see his face all scrunched up and covered in snot. Yondu sure as hell don't.

However, Terran tears seem as impervious to reason as they are to threats, bribes, bargains, and every other damn trick in Yondu's book. In fact, kid's so damn _leaky_ Yondu's starting to wonder if he's defective, and prays that his daddy won't demand a refund.

Thank the star systems that he and his usual bedmate aren't reproductively compatible.

So, life goes on. The kid keeps crying through the down-cycle. And amping his music to maximum and glaring at his dorm mates when they, leery from lack of sleep, stomp over to inform him that if he don't cut the yowling, they'll make him. It's noisy. It's irritating. It's disgustingly sentimental, and it certainly ain't endearing him to Yondu, no more than it is to the crew.

All this pales though, in comparison to the fifth of the Terran's talents.

Because it turns out the kid is a galactic-class, thrice-damned genius of a _cockblocker._

* * *

The first time, it's not technically the kid's fault. At least, it ain't _his_ fist that descends on the bridge door with all the self-righteous force of a teed off Nova tax collector looking for his dues, just as Kraglin's finally dropped to his knees and wrapped his mouth round Yondu's cock. But he's the root of the problem, so Yondu blames him anyway.

He and Kraglin are on night watch, meaning there's not much watching going on, unless you count the way his first mate's eyes rove down his body as Yondu unbuckles his belt.

They're not neglecting their duties. Because Yondu's not stupid and he doesn't believe the universe kind enough to let him get his rocks off before throwing another steaming mound of shit and accompanying gunfire their way, he's set the _Eclector_ 's scanners to their highest alert. If so much as an uncollected waste pod floats across their course, he'll know about it.

But despite the ever-present threat, he is – and he's not too ashamed to admit it – looking forwards to this. While it hasn't exactly _been a while_ (best thing about fucking your first mate: he's available twenty-four seven) nobody's gonna deny that it's been a bloody long day. Tensions over letting the brat roam are at an all-time high – this being only five hours after the second engine room incident, which Yondu is trying very hard not to think about, if only because the thought of what catastrophic damage untrained fingers could wreak while poking around in his ship's coils gives him the jeebies. He's already had to stop three attempts at grievous bodily harm and one all-out assassination. And sure, it won't do much good for his rep or his cheque if he brings the cargo in pieces. But this kid's swiftly becoming more trouble than he's worth.

Nope, it's been a day long enough to rival those spent in solar orbit, where some fireball or another's always blazing in the corner of your eye no matter the hour of the down-cycle. But now… Now the night's quiet; the bridge is empty. And things are finally looking up.

Yondu's belt is discarded on top of his Ravager's coat; it nestles in its indent like a one-eyed snake, and watches the proceedings with unblinking apathy. Kraglin waits for the nod – good lad – before sauntering over, all graceless limbs and bony joints, and dropping to his knees. Then he smirks up at Yondu as he spans long, spider-like hands over the captain's bare abdomen, and leans in to undo the zip with his teeth.

Any other Hraxian, and Yondu would have a wee bit of trepidation about letting those filed fangs anywhere near his Pride And Joy. But Kraglin's not just any Hraxian; he's proved that time and time over. Yondu does his first mate the honour of shutting his eyes, and rocks his crotch forwards against Kraglin's ugly face while he works the zipper down and slides his pants to his knees. Those ghost-white hands slide south. Fingers spread and curl around Yondu's hips while the first mate's thumbs massage the edges of his pouch slit in playful circles.

"Ugh." Yondu reaches back to brace himself against the control panel. Thankfully, the ship's autopilot comes complete with a locking function – it won't matter if he winds up laying on a thruster button or two. "Get on with it, will ya?"

"Can't take a little teasing?" Nobody else gets to talk to him like that – hell, _Kraglin_ don't get to talk to him like that, except when they're alone, and even then at threat of life and limb. Yondu gives him a light swat on the head anyway, making that ridiculous hair tuft quiver, and rolls his eyes.

"Not today. One second later, and we'd be handing the brat over minus his legs. Wanna explain that one to his daddy?"

Kraglin hums, but obediently turns his attention to where Yondu wants it. Elongated fingers wrap around him; pump with cruel slowness while the other hand walks daringly around to palm and squeeze Yondu's ass. "Courtesy of Horuz?" asks Kraglin conversationally. The moist heat of his breath brushes the head of Yondu's cock.

"Courtesy of Horuz."

"Should've whistled him down." Yondu tenses, about to snap that he don't need no advice on how to handle his crew. But Kraglin's ready for the backlash and gives him one slow, wet lathe from root to tip that makes his thighs tremble and effectively washes his mind of all thoughts of anything except what it'll be like to have that tongue scraping over those razorlike teeth as Yondu fucks his throat. A rough massage over the muscle at the base of his spine completes the process, and Yondu decides to interpret Kraglin's blunt nails raking lines across his ass that're going to sting like hell come morning, as the first mate's silent apology.

"Get your pants off," he growls instead. "Feels weird bein' the only one not wearing clothes."

"I'm the one suckin' yer dick, Captain." So Kraglin pulls off long enough to remind him. "If you wanna switch up, say the word."

"Yeah, yeah. Next time." Kraglin has to stop kneading Yondu's ass so that he can shimmy his pants off his hips – Yondu manages to prevent himself from arching back to follow the contact with the reminder that if he does that, he'll also be arching _away_ from Kraglin's mouth, which has dutifully returned to suckling the very tip of his cock, and pressing sloppy kisses up and down the sides. When Kraglin's cock emerges, it's already looking interested; a veined red rod that's as long and skinny as the rest of him. A few pumps has him at full mast, and then that damn sultry look is back, the one that shouldn't be half so effective given Kraglin's no angel on a good day and he's still puffy around one eye from where he got in that scuffle at the last station over some missing units, when he was haggling for some new dashboard knickknack his captain had set his eye on.

Yondu being Yondu, laughed at every punch Kraglin took and laughed all the harder when the lanky Hraxian finally whirled in a blaze of red leather and ripped out the crooked merchant's throat. Or had Kraglin been the crooked one that time? He can't remember. But it was a damn good fight. The knickknack's taken pride of place on the bridge, and Kraglin's been wearing his black-n'-blue trophies ever since.

"Keep grinnin' at me like that and I might think twice about lettin' those teeth of yours anywhere near my dick," he warns. Kraglin lets out a scoff that calls bullshit. But once his lower half is freed of its tight leather casing – and _damn_ , the sight of him on his knees clad only in his Ravager's coat and socks has no fucking right to be so attractive; the skinny, hairy bastard – he settles right down to business.

After that, everything's fine and dandy. Yondu's just getting into it again, the hand he's not using to steady himself wound through Kraglin's mohawk to urge him to quit bobbing about and _hold still_ while Yondu thrusts, when it happens.

A knock at the door.

At first, Yondu reckons he must have imagined it. He and Kraglin ain't exactly the most overt of lovers – doesn't pay to be when you're in a business where getting attached is synonymous with getting vulnerable. But most crewmembers have at least an _inkling_ of what goes on when captain and first mate's night shifts coincide. And even out of those that don't, most ain't willing to sacrifice their precious designated hours of shut-eye just to go risking his wrath. And so Yondu shrugs and settles. He lets himself get lost in the hot rough rasp of Kraglin's tongue, and the threat of those teeth, separated from, uh, _tender_ flesh by the chapped skin of his first mate's lips.

"Yeah, lad. Just like that."

Then it sounds again. Three knocks. Followed by a nervous croak -

"Uh. Captain? You in there?"

This time, Kraglin hears. The hand that was tugging his own straining dick now comes up to brace against Yondu's hips, not squeezing hard enough to halt them, but enough to inform him that their owner would perhaps appreciate a breather. Yondu grunts grumpily. He gives Kraglin's hair one last yank before acquiescing and letting him slide wetly off.

"Shouldn't you see who that is?" asks his first mate, after wiping his mouth. His teeth have cut into his lip; there's a bead of blood clinging to the side of his mouth that a lover might have tenderly thumbed away. Yondu just growls and shoves his head to one side. He still lets Kraglin ease his pants back up his thighs, in the vain hope it'll induce him to finish what he started, but Kraglin – the damnable workaholic – just clucks his tongue at the cerulean erection jutting towards his face with no signs of waning, snickers to himself, and pulls away. "Coming!" he calls. Pulling the leather trenchcoat shut, he pads to the door. He doesn't look back.

Yondu's half-tempted to order him to put on some pants, but after that interruption he figures that whoever's on the other side of the door deserves an eyeful. Himself, he settles for kicking the dashboard as hard as he can, before yanking on his coat and stomping over to disengage the bridge's biolock.

"Yes?" he snaps, when the door whooshes open to reveal a sheepish looking Thrabba. A sheepish looking Thrabba who looks between Yondu's rumpled state of dress and Kraglin's bare skinny legs, which are poking out the bottom of his trench with hairs quivering to attention all along their sinewy length, and blanches.

"Um, I'm sorry t'interrupt, captain –"

"You will be."

"… But I've been asked by the crew to, uh, come and request yer help. On a certain _matter_."

'Asked'. More like, 'drawn the short straw and threatened into submission'. But three guesses says that this _matter_ involves a small Terran sproglet who doesn't know when to keep his yap shut and is worth enough to pay Yondu's own bounty four times over. And so, waving for Kraglin to hold fort, Yondu clenches his fists and pushes past Thrabba, muttering under his breath about _dumb space pirates who can't be left on their own for five bloody minutes_ as he goes.

* * *

Thankfully he's walking straight by the time he reaches the crew's dorms. Nothing curdles arousal like the thought of having to deal with some crybaby Terran at this time of night. Yondu instead entertains himself with thoughts of inventive tortures, for use in an alternate universe where the kid isn't worth more alive than dead. Most involve some variation of him being served up, piece by piece, to the more carnivorous members of the crew. Hey: it's worked as a threat in the past. And the more fuss the kid causes, the more Yondu warms to it.

When they arrive, however, it sounds like punishment's already being dished out.

He can hear jeers and hoots from a whole corridor away. They're echoed by the patter of small feet, the faint buzz of music and the shrieks of a Terran in pain. It's almost tempting to keep walking. But Yondu whacks his resolve into shape with images of units slipping through his fingers as the kid's appendages are torn off away one by one, and heaves a lung-aching sigh. It's time this nonsense stopped.

Deciding that the best way of showing his disproval is by making an entrance, he emits a short, sharp whistle – Thrabba all but dives rearwards – and relishes the sudden silence as the arrow noses through the crack of the door. Keeping whistle and arrow menacingly steady, he follows it into the room, glowering at the whole bloody lot of them. Only when he's met every single eye does he let the high, sweet ululation fade; the arrow returns to its place at his hip, and the shoulders of twenty Ravagers slump in relief.

Yondu appraises the scene a moment longer. Then leans against the doorframe and crosses his arms. "Alright. Which one of you started it?"

It actually takes him a while to find the kid, lost as he is in a sea of mismatched sweaty alien bodies. Then he spots the orange foam of his headphones perched on Horuz's bushy scalp and looks down – and there, sure enough, is the Terran brat; one hand frozen in its futile attempt to claw Horuz's entrails from his belly. He's got tears streaking his face, and his hair's puffed out in a messy crest that could rival Kraglin's. But he doesn't look injured. Looks like a cull's not in order after all – Yondu's glad; recruiting sprees are never fun.

The kid also looks well and truly pissed.

It takes Yondu a moment for it to click that those weren't screams of pain he'd heard, but of rage. When it does, he can't help but be just a little impressed. Perhaps the kid ain't a total coward after all. As if hearing his thoughts, the kid detaches himself from Horuz's abdomen and marches over to loudly proclaim his injustices.

"He did!" the brat yells. His voice breaks as he points at Horuz, whose grin falls from his face and who starts making rapid motions of denial. Yondu observes him with a carefully neutral expression.

Okay, so definitely not a coward. Vote's still out on idiot, though.

"He started it! He stole my music!"

He shoulda known. Yondu resists the urge to smack his head back against the wall.

"Well, Horuz?" he asks, faux-sweet. "What d'you have to say for yourself? After committin' such a heinous crime?"

"Ain't that hee-nus, boss," mutters Horuz reproachfully. He takes the headphones off his head a little too rough – the noise Peter makes when the fragile Terran material bends is equivalent to that of a giant spacewasp being pulped in slow motion – and determinedly doesn't meet his captain's eyes. "Just a bit o'fun."

"Ain't so fun when you're endangering my stock." Horuz tenses up again. His weaselly eyes are trained on the distended line of Yondu's coat, where the arrow bends the pliant leather out at an angle. Yondu, casually flipping the fabric out of the way to give him an unobstructed view, lets him sweat. Then he transfers his glare to the kid.

"And you, boy. What were you doin' to warrant this little _game_?"

"Nothing!" the kid shouts. Apparently, all that pent up rage vainly vented on Horuz's battle-toughened form is now seeking to expend itself through any other channel available. Without a care for who he's talking to, the kid shoves his puffy puce-coloured face up as close to Yondu's as he can – not very – and all but shrieks. "He stole it! I weren't doin' nothing and he just _stole_ it from me, and he wouldn't give it back so I hit him but he just kept laughing so I kept hitting him and now you're here and he _still won't give it back_ , and –"

"Okay, okay, boy. That's enough." Slightly disturbed at how that much snot and spit and _volume_ can be expelled from such a small critter, Yondu grabs hold of the kid's shoulders and angles his ruddy little face away. He has to dig a finger into his ear to alleviate the ring. "Horuz?"

"Yes, boss?"

"You heard the brat. Give him his toy back."

"It's not a toy!" the kid is quick to interrupt. "It's _music_. And it's mine. And I don't want any of you touching it!"

"Give him his toy," repeats Yondu, unfazed. Horuz turns the contraption over and over in his meaty hands. Then finally dares hoist his scarred face up to treat Yondu to a scowl.

Unexpected.

"I will if he stops _cryin_ '," he says.

Even more unexpected.

For a moment, Yondu is speechless. Crew of rascally bickering ransackers they might be, but the Ravagers learn early that one does not get away with talking back to the captain; not with the same number of eyeballs they started out with, anyway. He's considering making an example of Horuz, when another crewmember – Jax, isn't it? – mumbles from the gathered crowd:

"That'll be the day."

"Or night," another Ravager interjects.

When no whistling yaka-arrow spears them, the voices grow bolder.

"Lil' shit's been snuffling all night-cycle, every night-cycle – as long as 'e's been on ship!"

"Haven't had a decent bout of shut-eye in ages…"

"If it ain't the crying, it's that blasted _music_ of his."

"Over and over again…"

"Pretends not to hear us when we ask 'im to turn it down polite-like…" Yondu sincerely doubts the Ravager's methods for enforcing post-light's-out silence are anything approaching 'polite-like', but right now he's too interested in the unfolding story to push the point. One by one, the entire dorm come forth to air their grievances – "It's alright for _him_ , he can sleep in the day-cycle," one particular sour-faced Zandarian grouches. "But the rest of us, well, we've got work to do. How're we supposed to pull our weight when we know we're gonna come back here and have to listen to that blasted _Ooga-Chaka_ for eight hours on end?"

For once, it seems Horuz might not actually be the problem.

Yondu turns speculatively to appraise the kid. Small. Scrawny in that way most species seem to be in the prepubescent years, but – if Terrans are in any way comparable to Centaurians – with a certain breadth to his shoulders that speaks of a sturdy build in the future. Just like his dada.

Also currently boasting a face that is bloated indignantly pink. Complete with dangerously wibbling lower lip.

"Is it really that bad?" he asks, half to himself. He's surprised by the adamant chorus of yes. "Alright. Guess there ain't nothing for it. C'mon, kid." And Yondu walks out. Then walks back in again when he realises the brat isn't following. Playing hard-to-get is the last straw, or at least one of the last handful; his thin-worn patience is a thread away from snapping entirely and insisting that he stick him with an arrow himself. "Seriously? Are ya deaf as well as stupid?" But the kid stamps his foot and points adamantly back at Horuz.

"I want my music back!"

Seems there ain't nothing for it. Heaving another sigh, Yondu walks over to Horuz and holds out his hand.

"Come on, be quick about it," he snaps, when Horuz seems content to stare at the upturned blue palm like he's reading the lines for his fortune. "If you wanna get some shut-eye before mornin', that is. When ya can all go dredge out the bogs as a reward for needin' me to sort out your mess."

"Is he gonna stop crying?" Horuz asks suspiciously. He does as he's told though. Nobody says no to Yondu twice. In fact, nobody says no to Yondu once most of the time, but Horuz _is_ a damn good fighter and he reckons he might regret killing him come morning. Anyway, Kraglin dislikes him, so that makes him a thousand times more amusing for Yondu to keep around.

"Probably not," Yondu replies. "But I'll take 'im somewhere where you can't hear him." That's good enough for Horuz, and it seems to appease the rest of the crew too. Yondu's hand closes over the kid's music-box, feeling the delicate wires and the brittle loop of plastic that Horuz had bent so close to snapping. Just as he could've snapped the kid if he'd so chose. Sure, this time it hasn't gotten nasty. But there's no telling about the next. Or the next, or the next. Yondu's going to have to be more careful.

He wraps the headset around the tape deck with uncharacteristic gentleness – mostly to avoid the screech that mistreatment of the delicate Terran technology would no doubt earn – and slides it into his pocket. "C'mon kid," he says again.

He spares Horuz and the others nod. Then jams the light off on his way past and waves a dismissive hand for Thrabba to get out of his way and back to bed. They'll be able to find their way to their hammocks in the dark. And even if they can't, he knows none'll dare flicking the switch until he's out of eyesight. After all this, if they don't wake up bright-eyed, bushy-tailed and ready to make his bogs smell like sunshine and roses, there'll be hell to pay.

"This way!" he calls over his shoulder, and starts making his way through the sloping knot of corridors, up crawlspaces and through doorways and down narrow runged shafts. This time the kid follows.

By the time he's gotten the kid settled in – as in, he's dumped him in one corner with a blanket and told him that guest or not, if he finds _one thing_ out of place in the morning he'd be first item on the menu – their watch has been and gone. He ambles back to the bridge in vain hope. But Kraglin's been replaced by the two newbie goons he picked up from a rival businessman when his franchise went bust-with-a-bang last shipping season, who, when they see his face hovering like a malignant blue jack o'lantern at the porthole, jump and twitch and make an attempt at looking busy that would be hilarious if it isn't so pathetically forced. There ain't much fun to be had pestering them further. Neither is there a justifiable reason for him to go knocking and rouse the whole of Kraglin's dorm, just so he can drag his first mate to a lower decks supply closet and fuck him in peace. And as unsavoury as the prospect of leaving a Terran brat alone in his quarters is, sharing those quarters only to listen to him _bawl_ all night is much, much worse.

Eh, there ain't long til his early shift starts anyway. He's only got a few hours to kill.

Yondu turns first one way, then the other, then realises that feeling useless on his own ship is the highlight of _fucking ridiculous_ and stomps off to survey the _Eclector_ 's cargo hold and see how many portions the kid munched through last mealtime. Someone has to keep this damn ship in order, after all.

* * *

That was the first time. Yondu calls it an unlucky fluke and spends the rest of the night tallying stock and cursing the kid, Horuz, Thrabba, _J'son of fucking Spartax_ and every galactic citizen in between (and, in a private segment of his brain never to be shared with anyone, Kraglin for not waiting up).

But he thinks that's over. That that's that.

He's wrong.

 **That's chapter 1 finished! Please tell me what you thought~ 3**


	2. Primitive R&R

The station creeps into scanning range like a spangled neon toad. Space is its usual dull miasma of burnished nebula and glimmering, crystalline stars, swirling away into infinity and too broad for the mind to grasp. The _Eclector_ drifts steadily onwards, and the most well-earned cheque of Yondu's life is almost in his pocket.

There's an estimated fortnight until they reach Spartax. More if they make a pit-stop – which, surveying supply levels, is swiftly becoming more of a mandatory chore than a merely preferable one. Rations don't mean much to a growing Terran. When he made his pre-job calculations, Yondu assumed height and general scrawniness could be correlated to portion size; but it seems he hadn't taken into account the astronomical amount of energy that bawling your eyes out every night and picking fights with the biggest, meanest members of the crew – excluding himself, of course – burnt through.

Surprisingly though, after one week of listening to badly-disguised snuffling when the kid was out roaming the decks (not to mention the complaints regarding the less badly-disguised snuffling that started straight after power-down and continued through the wee hours of the night cycle, and another week of surrendering his own sacred space so that the kid could bawl to himself in peace) it seems the brat's worn himself out. Still eats like a gladiator. But now Yondu's become accustomed to that weird, pink little face when it's not all splodgey and scrunched up with the effort of squeezing impossible volumes of brine from his tear ducts, he supposes that keeping the lad fed ain't too much to ask. Just so his daddy don't think he's been mistreating him.

But the looming promise of more units than there are stars with the Nova Empire stamp on them isn't the only positive. Now that he can make it through a night cycle without someone trying to shoot a plasma round through the boy, Yondu can finally – _finally!_ – get down to a bit of good old primitive R &R.

First thing's first though. Yondu's a man who likes his territory. Thanks to the kid, he hasn't slept in his own bed – and, more importantly, hasn't _done things_ to Kraglin in his own bed – for seven down-cycles. Thus when a night of skulking outside his door reveals that the kid's finally gone eight hours without waking up screeching for dear departed mama, Yondu decides it's high time he re-established the pecking order. Starting by reclaiming his room.

And so, precisely one hour before first shift on the bridge begins – Yondu, being captain, has the perk of allocating himself when and where he feels his presence will be of most use, and normally he avoids morning duty like the plague. But there ain't nothing so fun as shooting Kraglin stern looks whenever his gaze lingers too long on Yondu's backside while he's pacing round the room dictating the day's course, and hell, seven days is a _long time_ – Yondu rouses himself from the unoccupied hammock he's laid claim to, yawns, stretches, scratches his balls and goes to sort the kid's new sleeping arrangements.

"Boy!" he barks, banging on the door. It's courtesy. It's Yondu's room, and anyway, he's the captain – he's got overrides for every lock on the damn ship. When there's no response after a minute and Yondu realises he's started to hum the refrain from that blasted _Ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-cherry Bomb_ track, he decides his patience has been frayed enough.

"I'm coming in!" he announces, just in case the kid's stripped off or something (heaven knows why he would be. While Yondu likes his space he still believes in keeping himself on the same basic level as the crew, and opted out of having one of them swanky Xandarian ensuites with the sunflower-sized showerhead and the collapsible Jacuzzi, or anything else too fancy. (Looking back, this was a poor decision. He can only imagine the amount of shower sex he's missed out on. And he does so. Frequently.)) Still, stranger things have happened in space. Don't pay to be too careful – and hell, he don't want no eyeful of weird prepubescent Terran junk.

After giving the boy a generous five seconds to make himself presentable, Yondu slaps his hand palm-down on the biolock, waits for the prickle of electric sensors over his fingerprints, and boots the door open. "Mornin', scout! S'about time for you to move out of my room, and if you've so much as _thought for one second_ about nicking something I'll fuckin' pulverise you-"

Then he pauses. And frowns. Because the kid's not naked, and he's not snoring. In fact, he's not really doing anything that could be wrangled into an excuse that would vindicate him from not leaping up to answer the door the moment he heard his captain's voice. He's just… sitting. In the dark. With his headphones over his ears. Staring at nothing.

It takes Yondu a moment to place what it is that makes him feel so uneasy about the scene. The headphones are looped securely through the boy's wild thatch of gingery hair, but for once, Yondu can't hear their tinny whine.

"Boy?" he asks. Touches his arrow for reassurance – it's not often he sees eyes as hollow as that, and the brat's unstable on the best of days. Yondu wouldn't but it past him to snap and go for his throat.

Even after everything he's done for him.

Then he pulls himself together and strides into the room, snapping the light on to illuminate the kid's hunched shoulders, the knickknacks and half-dismantled weapons littering the desk, the unmade bed. He's captain of the Ravagers, damn it. He's not freaked out by some creepy Terran kid. "What's wrong with ya?" he asks after a long pause, during which the kid's only reaction to the light shift is to blink steadily shrinking pupils and clench his fists where they rest on his lap. Yondu forces a laugh. Don't say they broke him. That's nine million units down the pan… "C'mon, boy. You're givin' me the willies."

"Peter," says the boy quietly. Yondu squints.

"Eh?"

"Not boy."

"…Right." That seems to be as far as that vein of conversation's going. Expecting to be faced with – well, not exactly a _bright and chirpy_ Terran – Peter's shaping up to be a worse morning person than _Kraglin_ – but at least one with some semblance of an emotional range, this is already deviating from his plan. But life has an annoying tendency to do that. Yondu's got infinite experience salvaging bungled stratagem, and he's not thrown off his game yet. He's a man on a mission.

And so he changes tack, ignoring the diversion, and gets straight down to business.

"Okay, boy. Here's the deal. Tonight, I'm gonna walk back into my room after a long, hard day of physically restrainin' my lads from tearin' the merchants at the next port gaping red new ones – not to mention tearin' plenty of new ones myself. And I'm gonna find an empty room. Bed made. Everything in its proper place."

He sweeps his arm out to encompass the entirety of the room, which admittedly, with the omission of the ruckled sheets, looks practically spotless. _Practically_. Some of the papers on his desk have been shuffled a bit. Boy's been snooping – not that Yondu wouldn't do the same in his position. Still, given that the translator chip implanted in his neck doesn't work on the written word, he supposes he can let it slide. "Do we have an understandin'?"

The kid keeps staring at the wall. Then, just as Yondu is about to bid patience adieu and whistle to get his attention, he says in that same despondent little monotone –

"I told you not to call me boy."

To say he gets hung up on idiosyncrasies would be like saying that Horuz prefers his meat medium-rare.

Yondu barks out a laugh.

"I'll call you what the hell I like," he tells him. Then, just to rub it in – "boy." He's expecting a glare, or a snarl, or even a return to the kid's salty fountain impression. What he isn't expecting is for the boy to deflate over himself, curling into a small ball, and avert his blank gaze onto the Walkman clutched between his knees. "Alright, seriously, what's chewin' your wick? This is getting depressing."

"It broke," said the boy flatly. His stubby fingers toy with the buttons on the cassette player, snapping first one down and then the next, four in a row and back again. Each time he presses a new stiff black tab into place, the previous ricochets merrily up again. But there's no response from the cassette. Not a judder from those squirmy black reels that Yondu's somehow gotten used to watching spin. "I keep pressing play, but nothing's coming out. It's stopped working. It's broke."

Yondu shrugs.

"So chuck it." As soon as the words leave his mouth he knows they're futile; if the kid was willing to go toe-to-toe with Horuz to win back his little toy he sure ain't gonna toss it just because it's a bit more useless than usual. And yes, perhaps that is a mite hypocritical of him, considering that the dashboard of his personal shuttle's so cluttered with knickknacks and baubles you can't tell which blinking light means 'air supply constant' and which means 'incoming missile'; but hell, at least his collection looks cute. Which that primitive, clunky piece of Terran-technology most definitely don't.

Predictably, the kid hugs the busted Walkman to his chest. He sends Yondu a suspicious frown, like he thinks Yondu's going to make good on his threat (okay, okay, _threats_ plural) to blast it out the nearest airlock.

"No," he says.

"Fix it then."

And _there's_ that familiar little tremble in his lower lip. "I don't know _how_."

Yondu opens his mouth to respond. Then decides none of this is getting him what he wants. Ergo, it's pointless.

He's underestimated the kid's abilities to seed a space liberally with projectile tears and snot before, and so he steps towards the relative safety of the doorway, turning his back on the kid's trembling form with a contemptuous huff. Let someone else hold the brat's hair back while he cries. And as for tonight – well, Yondu'll bundle him out of the room by force if necessary.

Once he reaches the corridor though, the part of himself eternally obsessed with projecting the image of the mad, bad Ravagers captain he most definitely is realises what this must look like, and quickly checks the perimeter. Not a soul. Thank god. A captain beating retreat from his own quarters rather than facing a weepy Terran? He'd never live it down.

It's the thought of Kraglin laughing his skinny butt off that sets Yondu's resolve. He's gotta deal with this _properly_. Squaring his shoulders, he walks back into the room and – very gingerly, as if his proximity is liable to set off the waterworks – sits beside the kid. First time he tries to take the Walkman, kid freezes up. Yondu retreats. Holds up his hands in what the universal gesture for 'cool it'.

"It ain't gonna get better if you just sit there and _mope_ at it, boy."

"Peter," the boy says instinctively.

"Well, _Peter_. Loungin' about crying over things ain't what fixes 'em. You wanna make it all better, first you gotta _do_ something about it." Yondu ain't never thought of himself as one for motivational speeches. Apparently he's unearthed a hidden talent though, because the brat wipes his nose on the back of his sleeve, and when he next looks up the dead blankness has been swept from his eyes and replaced with something else.

Hope. Anticipation. The faintest shimmer of trust.

Yondu feels his last shreds of dignity withering. Fucking _kids_.

He ain't complaining too much though; the second time he reaches out, the boy dutifully hands the Walkman over, and does it without a fuss.

"You can fix it," he says. Doesn't ask. States. His voice has changed too – like Yondu's not the enemy anymore. Like Yondu's the nice old dude who sneaks him Hraxian candy-cubes when his momma ain't lookin' and occasionally ruffles his hair.

Yondu fights back his shudder.

 _Alright_. He's going to fix his damn Walkman, and in return the brat is going to stick to his assigned grubby little corner and not make trouble for the rest of the trip.

Or he would fix it. If he had the first clue of where to start. Fucking stupid primeval piece o' _Terran tech_.

"Look kid," he says after an ineffectual minute spent pressing buttons, turning the damn thing over and over and making the elastic metal of the headphones snap back and forth (he refuses to admit they fascinate him). "I ain't promising anything. Heaven knows I ain't much of one for fixing stuff. Usually prefer breaking it. Or better yet, stealing it. But I know a guy who knows a guy… I'll take it to see 'im when we make port today. Only thing is, might be a while before he can get it done. Terran technology ain't all that common this far out – think you can live without it a couple of weeks?"

Peter nods so hard that his head looks like it might go shuddering off his shoulders.

"I know all the songs by heart anyway," he says proudly. Yondu resists the urge to roll his eyes.

"Yeah, I'll bet. Alright then. I'll see to this. And in return –"

"Bed made, everything back in its proper place," the boy parrots. 'Chirrups', really. How he can bounce so quickly from chronic melancholia to gazing at Yondu like the sun shines out his ass, Yondu has no idea, but he's a scallywag and proud of it, and he's going to milk this opportunity for all its worth.

"And the room empty," he reminds him. "Oh yeah – you can give everything a dust while you're at it. And wash the porthole. Inside and out, seein' as we'll be docking soon. And, uh, fetch me dinner from mess. Two plates. And see if you can get Shorro to fork over some booze – if you tell 'im it's for me, he probably won't kick up." The boy just nods and nods. Yondu feels irrepressibly pleased with himself. Peace has been brokered, his room bartered for, and he's even managed to part the kid from his precious music player – although he's not sure how grateful the crew will be when Peter starts _singing_ the tracks instead. "Alright then! We're set." Struck by a gleeful whim that he can only blame on the prospect of reclaiming his space, he reaches out and claps the boy on the shoulder.

Okay, so he might have slightly overestimated Terran strength.

Half-Terran. Whatever.

But after righting him and brushing the dust out of his hair, Peter doesn't seem too bothered. He's mouthing the chores on the list Yondu gave him, trying to remember everything and counting them off on his fingers one by one – although honestly, Yondu's lived his entire life sans room service, and isn't too bothered if the kid ain't one for good house-keeping. Coming home to a window he can see light through will be enough of a novelty. But he's dithered long enough already. Pushing himself up, he shoots the kid a snaggletoothed smile that the kid tentatively returns.

"I'd best go make sure those turd-blossoms on the bridge haven't plotted me a course straight into the nearest asteroid – I can trust you to lock the door when you come and go, right? Who knows what nosy folks might find of interest."

Pointedly, he looks towards the rifled desk, just in case the kid thought he got away with it. His poker-face isn't bad; needs a little tweaking around the eyes.

They'll have to work on that.

Then Yondu loads Walkman into trenchcoat pocket, gives Peter a nod – the one he usually reserves for his crew, for some unfathomable reason – and marches down the corridor whistling to himself. It's time to go visit an old friend.

Well. Not technically an old _friend_. Do people still count as friends when they've tried to kill you four times? Sure, one could be laughed off, two drunk off, three fucked off – but four?

Still, Yondu consoles himself as he saunters onto the bridge and shoots Kraglin a wink, there's really no other way out of this. He wants his room back, he wants a decent night's kip in a bed that don't sway, he wants to fuck Kraglin in relative privacy. Fixing some dumb Terran tape deck in return isn't too much to ask.

It's only when they're touching down at the station that Yondu realises that even if he does get the Walkman fixed, the kid ain't going to be around to retrieve it.

* * *

The dock is cool and bright.

Artificial sunlight is piped down from the solar tubes set in the hangar ceiling high above, and an ancient, creaking filtration system stirs the stuffy air. The Ravagers spill out en masse, a horde of red leather and cheerful swearing who drive a dark merlot wedge into the crowds before they start to dissipate, slinking away through back alleys and boltholes to where the shadows are darkest and the goods come cheap. Each man's been assigned a team, and each team a segment of the hold to fill. Ones who get it done best for the least units, get relieved from duties next time they're at port – Yondu spots the lucky winners from the last station as they amble off towards the whores district, slapping each other's backs in anticipation for the reward of a job well done. They'll reconvene back at the _Eclector_ for mid-afternoon, and after a last check of stock to make sure all's shipshape and not liable to explode, they'll be safely in orbit by nightfall. Plus or minus a few Ravagers who miss curfew – there's always a few. But that's their problem. You fall behind, you get left behind. It's the way the galaxy rolls.

Yondu hesitates. His fingers curl around the cool metal. There's plenty of work to be done without him running personal errands for a damn piece of cargo. Especially personal errands that the kid's never going to see the fruits of, what with his exciting new life on Spartax and all. Hell, he probably won't even _remember_ the damn thing after the first week.

And even if there weren't work on Yondu's mind… Well, he knows a decent bar about a mile up ahead; owner owes him drinks for smuggling contraband through a Nova line once upon a moon. Bit posh for his kind, but hey, he gets a kick out of the way fancy folk grimace when he walks into a room. There'll be booze. And enough scantily clad females to make Kraglin's mug go all constipated. Could be fun.

He's seriously considering it; after handing over his quarters for a week, he figures he's made enough sacrifices to warrant him some downtime. But then he thinks of the kid's gormless megawatt smile that could outshine the ship's docking lights, and – better yet – the empty room that's waiting for him and Kraglin that night.

That's settled.

Yondu buttons his coat up to the neck, waves for his first mate to deal with the restocking and haggling – man cuts prices like a fish-wife, when he's not ripping out spines for getting short-changed – and goes to visit The Crab.

* * *

Five hours later, and Doc is putting his multitasking skills to impeccable use: stitching a row of sutures into Yondu's stomach while trying to hold him down. Having four arms helps matters. The needle slides in and out, pulling the blue flesh into tight puckers on either side of the wound.

"Ow!" Yondu tries to twist away, but is prevented by the cool, firm hands.

"If you'd let me use a stronger sedative, this would be much easier," Doc complains. But Yondu doesn't like it when his head feels like it's full of moist cotton wool – kinda like it does now, actually; _weeeird_ – and he reckons he'd like getting jabbed unconscious less still. Not to mention that he's seen men babble all kinds of shit when they're put under. He trusts Doc about as much as he trusts anyone on this ship – roughly as far as he can throw them, which is a fair sight further than he trusts most other folk – but he still don't want to air his dirty laundry.

The ordeal's over pretty fast, all things considered – Doc can stitch up a Ravager in the time it takes a tailor to thread his needle. But it might as well have been hours. Yondu's almost broken the bars on the operating table he's been squeezing them so hard, and his mouth tastes of blood and bile. He looks down at the new slash that runs from his left oblique to his navel, just nicking the line of his unused carrier-pouch. It's raised and puffy, only the crisp black threads keeping the skin together. Another ugly for the collection.

"You're done," Doc says, turning away to wipe off his equipment. When he's got the blood off, he dumps them into a tray of sterilizer – they don't have the resources to chuck good med supplies every time someone gets a bit bashed up. Sure, any Xanderian surgeon worth his salt would turn up his nose at the wall full of hacksaws and bone drills and tweezers, all crusted with the same speckly coating of rust. But they do the trick. And considering the amount of stinging sterilizer Doc poured over his wound – at least half of it, he's convinced, in punishment for getting himself beat up in the first place – Yondu's not too worried about infection. About smelling like an herbalist's shot stick for the rest of the journey, perhaps.

Grunting, he swings his legs over the side of the bed and makes to stand. It takes him embarrassingly long. Doc observes from the corner of his eye, pretending to be engrossed in cleaning his favourite syringe. Eventually he's on his feet – albeit swaying dangerously from side to side, and slightly concerned that his ship's suffering turbulence, despite being magnetized to the dock. "I think," says Doc, as he sets the needle on the table and tosses his gloves into the bowl to soak, "you ought to go to bed."

Yondu flexes his side, just to test it. Gasps and doubles over.

"Smartest darn thing I've heard all day."

Doc doesn't offer him a hand back to his quarters. Yondu is upright and he's not bleeding out, ergo, he can pull his own weight. He gets a few looks as he shuffles along the red-lit angular corridors, hand pressed flat against the bandage Doc glued to his torso under the firm injunction that he doesn't take it off, get it wet, or engage in any rigorous activity for at least three days (Yondu intends on keeping two of those promises). But the men have jobs to do. And once they've given him the perfunctory once-over to make sure he's not going to flop flat on his face like a victim of that favourite Kree torture that quite literally turns your skeleton to jello, they get on with them.

Yondu weighs up the merits of doing a quick inspection, just to keep 'em on their toes. But considering that he's having enough difficulty staying on his own, it may not be the best idea.

Anyway, when he shoulders his way through the next door and appraises the hold in all its grimy, bustling glory, everything looks like it's going off without a hitch. So they _are_ capable of performing basic tasks without his supervision.

Or rather, under Kraglin's.

Yondu smiles to himself and keeps walking. Lad's learnt well.

He's passing through the main hangar loading bay. Traffic peals apart to let him stagger through, men juggling flat-packed brandless protein crates over his head. He sticks to the walls, staying out of the way as much as possible. He might be the captain but he sure as hell ain't gonna compromise the efficiency of the loading operation by swanning through the middle of the neat conveyor line of red leather-clad limbs and packing crates that Kraglin's established – plus, his gut tells him that his first mate's gonna be _mildly pissed_ at him as it is. In that annoying way people tend to be when their long-term bed partner ambles into a nest of old enemies without them there to watch their back.

Especially when said enemies come mighty near to carving a good-sized slice out of your torso.

As usual, his gut is correct. He reaches the far side of the room before he feels a stare prodding at the back of his neck.

Yondu turns. Catches his first mate's unamused eye. After that, there's no escape.

Sighing to himself, he leans his back against a free patch of wall, pretending to take a breather, and checks on his bandage for the umpteenth time. Kraglin finishes supervising the supply line of protein crates and waits for the next team to start filling the spare fuel tanks. Then he waves at Thrabba to take charge, and saunters over with his hands in his pockets as if he just so happens to be heading in the same direction. When he reaches the wall, the first thing he does is offer Yondu an arm. Yondu doesn't take it until they've rounded the corner though, away from the hangar and into a less populated corridor. Then he sighs and lets the tension unravel from his shoulders, leaning – just a little – onto the proffered skinny crutch.

"I know, I know," he says to his first mate's silence. "I'm a fuckin' idiot."

"You're the one who said it, captain." But he still drags Yondu back to his quarters. Yondu opens the door with a wave of a hand and a kick that makes his whole side _burn_ – although he refuses to make a noise, because Kraglin's still watching him and the smirky bugger don't need _another_ excuse to say 'I told you so'.

"Well?" he drawls, once he's comfortably arranged on the bed. Which, he notices, is made to hospital corners and ruler lines. And heck – now he looks, there's two trays stacked on the desk (which has been returned to a more natural-looking disarray) with a promisingly unlabelled bottle propped alongside. And he can see the brutal, jagged skyline of the port through his porthole window. Heck, he can even make out the needle points of the cranes at the far end of the dock. Kid's outdone himself. "You gonna stand there and stare like you got a stick shoved where the sun don't shine? Or are you gonna come in and get the real deal?"

Kraglin snorts, but does as he's bid.

"I should really be makin' sure Thrabba don't mix up the fuel and the drinking fluids again," he says, even as he pushes the door shut and gracelessly straddles Yondu's chair. Yondu laughs, and motions for him to scoot closer.

"We'll get him to taste-test all the containers before we set off. Now, how about you fetch me some o'that magical mystery liquor, and come over here already?" Kraglin's leer is wickedly divine as he pushes off the chair and pads to the bed, bottle neck clasped in his long, thin fingers.

"Ain't you supposed to be restin'?"

"I'll rest when I'm dead," Yondu tells him, and holds out his arm for the bottle. He receives Kraglin instead, who flings himself onto the bed with a little more delicacy than usual and tucks up close to his uninjured side. The first mate pulls the cap with his teeth and takes a deep swig, raising his eyebrows appreciatively before handing it over.

"Nice. Didn't think Shorro had any o'this left in stock." Yondu shakes the bottle before taking his own draft, listening to the swish of sweet Kalzalorian moonshine. He hadn't thought Shorro had any left either. The kid's more talented than that weepy exterior would have you believe.

"Yeah," he lies casually, and hooks his elbow a little tighter around Kraglin's bony shoulders. "Had to squeeze 'im for it – fat fucker was hiding it under his cot, would ya believe it?"

"Glad he saved it," Kraglin says. His hungry eyes are following the bottle. But he won't ask for it unless prompted. He's a good first mate, and he takes what his captain gives – today, as Yondu's in a generous mood, he swaps the bottle back without further comment. Kraglin throws his head back to pour the burning liquor straight down his gullet; Yondu finds his eyes drawn to the gangly line of his throat, tracing his Adam's apple as it lurches up and down between each swallow. Kraglin's got dark stubble smattered over his jawline, the same colour as the tuft on his head and the sprouts that Yondu knows are curling under his armpits and over his chest and shins. Black on white, thick on thin; hidden from view by that dusty travel worn trenchcoat that Yondu longs to push off his shoulders.

There's a trickle of moonshine snaking down the corner of Kraglin's chin. He rights the bottle and grins sharply at Yondu, wiping it off before the captain can lean in to lick it away. "Ain't tasted moonshine this good since we were last at Kalzalorii."

Yondu mimes a toast. "To greedy fat fuckers, then."

"To greedy fat fuckers." They drink.

"And to captains who brave life and limb walkin' into the Crab's lair to fix some dumb Terran's music box." This time though, Kraglin hugs the bottle when he grabs for it.

"Not a chance, sir."

Usually, Yondu would insist – if only because experience says their wrestling over a bottle will rapidly be discarded in favour of a different type of wrestling altogether. But usually, he don't have a laceration the length of his fucking forearm scoured into his side.

Which chooses this moment to twinge. Yondu yelps, and drops back onto the pillow with a defeated groan. Kraglin, who remains seated, passes the bottle from hand to hand and watches him with mild curiosity. "Why'd you go to the Crab anyway? You know he's out for you."

"He was the closest," Yondu mutters. "And he's always claimin' he's the best in the fucking galaxy. Figured I'd give him a chance to prove himself right." Kraglin looks distinctly unimpressed.

"What, by soldering _battery-age_ Terran circuits? Sure, it might take him a year to find the parts, but after that it's as straightforward as building a plasma pistol, right?" Yondu decides not to mention his own failed attempt at prodding the thing back into life.

"Well, next time I'll bring it to you," he says defensively, crossing his arms tight over his chest. The leather coat drags along his bandage and his whole side bunches up into a series of rigid, pain-stiffened knots. " _Fuck_. That hurts."

"That's what happens when you refuse painkillers. Seriously sir, are you a masochist or something? Not that I couldn't work with that, but –"

"Don't need painkillers," grunts Yondu, face slowly unscrunching as the pain fades from blistering agony to mere red-hot stipples. "S'why I got booze. Now give it." Kraglin does, and even helps prop the pillow under his back so that his chest is elevated enough that he doesn't choke. When the bottle's empty and Yondu's feeling pleasantly buzzed – he lets it clatter to the floor; he'll deal with it later, or Kraglin'll pick it up on his way out – the two of them somehow wind up reclining together, staring up at the bare metal slats of the ceiling. If their knuckles are just brushing against one another's, neither pulls away.

Then –

"What d'you mean, 'next time'?" asks Kraglin.

Yondu, whose side has disintegrated into blissful numbness along with most of his higher brain functions, twists his neck to shoot Kraglin a quizzical look.

"The hell you talkin' about?"

"Earlier," Kraglin explains. He shifts so that his hands are laced over his stomach, fingers spread like spider legs – no, Yondu does _not_ scowl at the sudden cool air that brushes his knuckles; he's just wishing that Kraglin would have pity on his moonshine-mussed brain and be a little more informative. But the first mate seems to be fixated on the long diagonal scrape that runs across the central joist. Yondu follows his gaze. He remembers – how could he forget? It's the one he made that time when they were sneaking through a backwater Kree systems, where their gravity generators had been knocked out by an EMP blast and his implant had somehow caught the fall-out.

Now _that_ had been fun. The yaka-arrow had started reacting to voice, breath, everything; zipping around Yondu's head like a particularly deadly and irritating species of space fly. But that's not what Yondu's interested in right now.

Realising his mind's drifting – must be getting old – Yondu gives Kraglin's shoulder a light shove to encourage embellishment.

"The hell you takin' about?"

"You said that you'd let me fix it next time," his lieutenant says. He stretches out his toes – they wriggle off the end of the bed – and folds his hands under his skull. "But it's not like we're ever gonna see the brat again, right?"

"Peter," Yondu corrects. Then snaps his mouth shut.

The silence is rather more awkward this time. Yondu examines the backs of his fingers, counting them twice just to make sure that the moonshine wasn't laced with anything _really_ nasty. Because 'Peter'? The fuck is he thinking? Kraglin is, of course, smirking to himself as he considers the implications of Yondu's unintentional interruption.

Kraglin therefore needs to be distracted.

Alcohol makes it easy to ignore the tug at his stitches as he rolls up and over his first mate, cupping his jaw and pulling him up to messily gnaw on his neck. The contrast between their skin tones is more striking than ever under the harsh lights of a ship running at full power, and Yondu relishes it, running his fingers over Kraglin's pale stubbled cheek as Kraglin heaves his head higher, and pushes his tongue between his lips to lick hungrily at his teeth.

Eugh. Normally Yondu'd protest, but right now, he's too drunk to care.

The liquor on their breaths mingles. Yondu's never been gladder that his Centaurian biology makes whiskey-dick nigh impossible, because, when Kraglin's palm slide down to rub at the front of his pants, moonshine or no, things are definitely heating up.

"That's not resting," is the first thing Kraglin says when they pull apart for air. Snarky little shit. But it's better than snide comments regarding a certain pesky Terran brat, who really is far more trouble than he's worth, and so Yondu just rolls his eyes and nips Kraglin's thin underlip.

"Shut up," he orders.

"Aye aye, captain."

After that, everything goes… well, as smoothly as can be expected. Yondu finished well over three quarters of the bottle, not to mention that he's recovering from a _massive fucking knife_ being introduced to his stomach unfriendly-end first. So he figures it's only fair that he kneel back and concentrate on keeping his balance while Kraglin goes to work on his belt. He kicked his boots off when he entered the room, because they've got the usual healthy covering of dust and mud and generic space grime that accumulates after a few weeks on the job – admittedly, he's not much better. But what's it they say? It's the little things that make a house a home.

Anyway, having his boots guarding the door definitely makes it easier to struggle through that difficult stage that arises around the ankles, where unless you're careful, a sensual undressing can devolve into all-out warfare against pants, socks and shoes. Yondu feels fabric slip and catch on the arches of his feet. He presses hands onto Kraglin's shoulders for support. Kraglin sits up to give himself more room to manoeuvre, his captain still hovering over his legs, and clasps a careful arm around Yondu's good side while he begins to suck hickeys into his neck.

Well, _suck_ ain't quite right. Kraglin's got teeth and he ain't afraid to use them – only problem is, the marks can get a little flashy in the morning. Yondu's not fond of wearing scarves; if they don't clash with the Ravager's coat they'll clash with his skintone, and anyway, they make his neck itch. So when he feels the first drag of serrated fangs, Yondu kneels up as high as he can and forces the lanky bugger's head down so that his attention relocates to Yondu's chest.

"Alright," he says, once Kraglin's practically worried his nipples off and is leaving a bruising trail of bites across his pectorals like he's trying to turn him indigo. "Up. We're switchin'."

Kraglin thins his eyes at him. "Don't I still owe ya a blowjob?"

"And I'm still lookin' to claim on it. But for today, Doc says I'm to rest up. Which means I get to put my feet up while you ride the fuck out of my dick." That makes his first mate chuckle.

"Sounds like a plan," he says, and extricates himself from under Yondu to go rummaging through his trenchcoat pockets in search of lube. Yondu keeps looking at that scratch. It's broader on one side than the other, as if the yaka arrow had almost pierced it head-on, but at the last moment glanced to one side. He wonders if the kid had laid on this bed with his broken Walkman strapped to his head and gazed at that same spot; traced it with his eyes and imagined what might have happened for such a brutal scar to be engraved above where most men's arms could reach. (Kraglin might have a chance. Lanky fucker.) Perhaps he thought there'd been some sort of epic space duel. Perhaps he thought that Yondu had experimented with keeping a razor-tailed markeet for a pet. Perhaps he'd been too far buried in his musicless funk to care.

"You're thinkin' too much again." Kraglin shrugs off his trench, shimmies trousers down, peels off his socks and steps lightly back to the bed, waggling the tube like he's conducting to an imaginary band. "Now, you gonna rub this up my ass, or d'you want me to do it?" Yondu crooks a lazy finger.

"Get back up here then." Kraglin crawls up over him, pressing the lube into Yondu's hands so that he can smooth his own up the Centaurian's thighs and teasingly push them apart. Yondu swats him away. Then pulls him up his body so that he's looming over him, palms braced against Yondu's chest. He squeezes a generous dollop of the lube out to warm between his fingers – then sniffs it with a bemused look. "This is some fruity shit. Where'd you find this?"

"Oh, just about," Kraglin says quickly. Too quickly. A glance at the cap tells Yondu this is the first time it's been opened, and okay, so maybe he's not the only one who's been missing their night time trysts.

"Did you buy this today?" he asks, face splitting into a wide and magnificently shit-eating grin. Kraglin snatches the tube from his hands.

" _Stole_ it," he mutters. Really, Yondu shouldn't have expected anything less. "If you ain't gonna get on with it –"

"Alright, alright; don't get your panties in a knot…" There's a sulky silence. Yondu busies himself rubbing the slick substance between his fingers until the urge to make another jab becomes too great to ignore. "You spoil me, sweetheart."

"Sir?"

"Yeah?"

"Never call me that again."

"You forgettin' which one of us gives the orders, honeybun?" Kraglin shows his teeth.

"You're weird."

"And you're not sittin' on my cock. Let's change that."

So they do.

And then Peter knocks on the door.

"Yondu? Yonduuu!"

" _Oh my God_ -" He grabs onto Kraglin's waist to stop him moving, which means that when his first mate freezes it's with just the tip of his cock being squeezed in the tight hot channel of his ass, which is just all shades of frustrating, and _oh hell_ the kid's palmprint is still coded into the biolock and if he so much as _waves his hand_ in front of the damn thing he's gonna come bursting right in and –

"I know you're in there, Yondu! What happened to my Walkman? Did you get it fixed? Did your friend agree to help? Horuz said that you were hurt or something – did you fall over? Did you get in a fight? Are you okay? Do you have my Walkman?"

Yondu resists the urge to whistle. He can feel a headache coming on, and the warm pulse that was coiling sporadically in his belly has waned, overpowered by the pain in his side.

"Kill me now," he mutters. Kraglin cocks his head to one side. Then grins. Yondu realises what he's going to do a moment too late. Before he can shake his head in the negative, Kraglin scrapes his ragged nails over the bite marks on Yondu's chest, giving each dark blue nipple a wicked pinch that wrings a gasp from his captain, and _slowly_ slides himself down. All the way down.

"Yondu, if you don't open this door _right now_ , I'm coming in!"

"Go away!" Yondu roars. His hands are trembling where they clutch onto Kraglin's waist. "I'm – I'm busy!"

"You're just in your _room,_ you're not even doing any captain stuff!" He doesn't need to see Peter to imagine the pout. "I want to know what's happening with my Walkman. _Now._ "

Kraglin elongates his spine in a smooth roll that leaves Yondu gasping, and latches onto his earlobe. "Go on," he murmurs. "Tell him. He ain't gonna go, otherwise."

"You're a fuckin' a-hole, you know that?"

"You love it, sir," Kraglin says with far too much confidence. Yondu just groans and focuses on the vice-squeeze of Kraglin's body around him; the scrape of stubble and teeth and a hot wet tongue along his jawline. Kraglin's thighs are taut and firm, bunching under Yondu's palms as he rises, and falls, and rises again.

"Yondu!" calls Peter demandingly. "Who's in there? Who're you talking to?"

And as infamously shameless as he might be, Yondu really, _really_ doesn't want the duty of explaining _this_ to a prepubescent Terran. That's his daddy's job. So this time when Kraglin rocks himself back, leering with his cock jutting out perpendicular to his body like a ruddy skin-sheathed flagpole, Yondu surges up, ignoring the sharp complaint from his side, and rolls both of them other.

"Stop," he says firmly, and wags his lube-smelling fingers in front of Kraglin's face like he's a naughty child. Kraglin, of course, takes the opportunity to suck them into his mouth. He hollows his sallow cheeks around them, chasing every lingering hint of taste, and waggles his eyebrows in a way that's frankly ridiculous. Yondu unsuccessfully tries not to laugh. Then smooths his features when the kid either _hurls_ something at the door or smashes his head against it hard enough to give himself concussion.

"Yondu!"

With a put-upon sigh, the Ravager's captain extracts himself from his first mate's bodily orifices and turns to the door. "One minute, boy!" he calls.

"Peter!" Peter insists. "And I'm counting!"

" _Peter_ ," Kraglin mimics under his breath. But when Yondu kicks him he obediently rolls off the bed onto shaking legs – to Yondu's eternal amusement and not a little bit of pride – and wanders leisurely over to pick up their discarded clothes. He shrugs into his vest. The smatter of tattoos above his collarbone extends above the neckline, inky against his pallid skin. Then he turns around, very pointedly, and bends over further than is strictly necessary to hoist his trousers up. It shouldn't be attractive in any way – those legs are too gangly and hairy and goddam _white_ , and the ass above ain't much better – but Yondu feels himself reacting, feels that familiar warm constriction in his chest.

The jump Kraglin makes when he wolf-whistles is worth every ounce of frustration. Unfortunately, he doesn't have long to savour it.

"Thirty-nine, forty," shouts Peter warningly. Yondu curses and painfully drags himself to the bedside.

"Pants," he hisses to Kraglin, who looks like he considers holding them for ransom before deciding it's not worth the risk and forking them over. Wise lad.

"Fifty-four, fifty-five, fifty-six… Nearly there…"

"I'm coming, I'm coming!" Yondu doesn't bother with a shirt as he forces himself upright and stomps for the door. He can claim his wound's aching too much if the kid asks. Win himself some sympathy-points from his dumb, sentimental half-Terran brain.

He rips the door open in Peter's smug face. "And don't think I didn't hear you missing out half the forties. Who the hell taught you to count, boy?" Peter, of course, being a nosy little shit, immediately tries to peer into the room under Yondu's arm. Yondu moves to block him, but Kraglin's already given him a faux-cheery wave.

"Hey, kid."

"Hey Kraglin. What're you doing in the captain's room?" Yondu's about to open his mouth to spout some bullshit about _battle plans and sortin' tactics for the next job_ , but Kraglin beats him to the chase with an easy grin as he flings himself down onto Yondu's chair.

"Helpin' him change the bandage."

"Oh!" And the kid's attention is re-diverted. Onto Yondu. Or rather, onto the big white square glued over his side. Yondu isn't too comfortable with the glittering interest in that stare. Terran boys, it seems, have a tendency to poke new things, and even with a whole Galaxy suddenly spread out at his fingertips, Yondu being wounded is as new as it gets. He crosses his arms and puts on his fiercest scowl, ready to whistle if the kid so much as _thinks_ it. Surely a few fingers aren't too much to lose? J'son probably won't even notice. Anyway, he's not exactly set for winning father of the year any time soon; what with sending a bunch of space pirates to retrieve his son rather than, Yondu doesn't know, an _official Spartaxian regiment of the royal guard?_

… Which is, now he thinks about it, rather odd.

But anyway. Peter's still got his eyes fixed on the bandage – thankfully, he's not sharp enough to realise that the edges look too professional to be Kraglin's handiwork, who can almost handle walking in a straight line without getting distracted when he's _not_ pissed off his rocker – and his hands remain outside the danger zone. But then, as Yondu's about to snap at him and tell him to take a goddam picture, that inquisitive freckled little face turns up to his.

"Why don't you have a belly button?"

Yondu shrugs. "Alien." Not a lie. Everyone's an alien to someone. Peter points, but doesn't touch – just. Saves himself his digits.

"And there's a funny line too. Is it like a pocket? In your tummy? For hiding things?"

"You could say that."

"That must be useful, I guess. For when you're running away from the space police." A brief pause for contemplation. Then: "What colour's your blood?" Yondu's lips twitch.

"Three guesses."

"Well, I suppose it _could_ be red like mine – like, if you've just got blue skin or something. But at the same time, it would be _totally awesome_ if you had blue blood! Or… or purple! Or green like the pointy-eared dude from Star Trek!"

That last one takes him aback. Pointy-eared men with green blood? Yondu frowns at him.

"When've you met a skrull?"

"A – what?" Must be a Terran thing. Maybe there's a whole breed of 'em that Yondu wasn't introduced to, on his little sojourn to the backwards water ball that they'd called (for some unfathomable reason) Earth. Honestly, that was just lazy naming. Might as well call it 'mud-planet' and have done with it.

"Nevermind."

"Okay." Peter bounces on the balls of his feet for a moment, apparently having forgotten his original purpose. His gaze keeps straying to the bandage, like there's a fishhook lodged there, the reel of which is attached to his eyes. "Um. Does it." And then he falls suspiciously silent and stares at his boots. Yondu, who's never had much patience with dancing round a point, glares all the harder.

"What? Spit it out already. My, uh, bandage needs changing again." Peter purses his lips dubiously.

"Looks fine to me."

"Yeah well, tell me the same thing when you've got your intergalactic practitioner's degree." He ignores Kraglin, who is cackling to himself in the background. "Now. What were you saying?"

"Oh just…" And he's _blushing_. It's kinda interesting to watch. In answer to his earlier question, Yondu's blood comes out much the same shade as he's rendered on the surface; useful in circumstances, such as not having to fret about coming over all hot and bothered when Kraglin's rubbing his foot against his crotch under the table or whatever, but annoying in others, where if you're out cold and bleeding everywhere then finding the wound in a hurry can be a bit of a pain. Kraglin, in contrast, definitely bleeds red. But when his blood's on the right side of his skin, he's impervious to all but the faintest patches of colour, which form on the bones of each cheek in times of high anger and spread messily to his ears and down the sinews of his throat when he's aroused.

This kid takes that to the next level. His face looks like a ripe plum.

"Did it… y'know." And he gestures ineloquently at Yondu's side. Yondu taps his foot impatiently; the blush deepens. "Hurt. Did it. Hurt?"

Does the kid think he's immune to pain or something? Yondu huffs in irritation.

"I got split open by a fucking energy sword; of course it hurt. While I was barterin' for your toy, I'll have you know. So you can add that to the tally of things you owe me. Along with ferryin' your sorry ass halfway round the galaxy, _and_ stopping the crew from using you as meat chow come snacktime!"

"I never _asked_ you to abduct me," Peter mutters. But it's not quite as vehement as it has been the past, oh, five hundred odd times he's said it. Then, still examining his toecaps, the words spill out all in a rush –

"ThankyouforgettingmyWalkmanfixedforme, andI'mgladyou'reokay!" And he dips his head in a hasty half-nod while Yondu's translator chip's still puzzling through the first half of that jumble of syllables, and darts off.

Probably wise. Yondu, self-proclaimed and universally acknowledged a-hole that he is, would make the most of the kid's inclination to feeling indebted and have him scrubbing the whole ship until it shines as bright as his porthole window. But as it is, by the time Yondu's mouth has recovered from its slack gape and is capable of forming words, the kid's already gone.

"Huh," he says. Closes the door. Then, when he slumps back onto the wrinkled sheets – "Shit. He didn't ask when he'd get the Walkman back." Kraglin scrapes the chair closer, one of the dinner trays claimed on his lap. He paints swirls up and down his captain's forearms with scraggly, half-chewed nails.

"When're you gonna tell him?" he asks.

"Tomorrow, I guess." It's a lie. Although it takes him half the night cycle to realise it.

* * *

Then Yondu sits bolt upright, and has to half-bite his fist off to muffle the shout as his side lights up like a fucking firework display. Kraglin's there immediately, blinking bleary arms and flailing at an imaginary enemy.

"Wha? Wazzup? Wass goin' on – we under 'ttack?" Yondu grabs a bony wrist in each hand to stop them from introducing themselves to his nose. His side's thrumming in time with his pulse, and although a distraction wouldn't be unwelcome, Yondu doesn't relish the thought of having to get his nasal cartilage clicked back into place for the seventh bloody time because his go-to choice of bedmate has a tendency to wake up swinging.

"Kraglin!" he hisses urgently.

"What? What is it?" His first mate's sleep-encrusted eyes are wide and sharp, scanning the shadows for potential dangers. When they find none, they relocate on Yondu. Then immediately flicker down to check on the bandage. It's still tight as a glove around Yondu's side, holding him together. "You good? Ain't started chuckin' up blood or nothing?"

"No, no…" Yondu releases Kraglin's wrists when he determines his bonny good looks are safe, so that he can instead press thumbs to his forehead in horror at the unfathomably idiotic decision that he's about to make.

"Boss?" says Kraglin, quieter now. "You alright?"

Well. If he's gonna do it, might as well work up the balls and get it over with.

"Kraglin?"

"Right here, captain."

Yondu takes a deep breath. Releases it. Rubs some of the sweat from his upper lip and tries to predict what his first mate's reaction will be. Given that Kraglin's the only one Yondu had trusted enough to tell just how high the stakes they're dealing with are, he doubts it'll be pretty.

"I'm keeping the kid."

There's a terse silence. Yondu can practically hear Kraglin's brain ticking over, putting it together and calculating their chances of flying away with vital organs and favourite limbs intact. _J'son, Emperor of Spartax. Half-Terran son. Due in a fortnight maximum. Probably a whole planet-load of highly trained soldiers ready to spring into pursuit the moment he passes worry-hour._ But then something changes; the pressure releases. Suddenly there's a head tucked onto his shoulder and an arm slung comfortably over his lap.

"We're fucked," Kraglin says, and goes back to sleep. Yondu can only agree.

 **Please tell me what you thought! I love reviews~ 3**


	3. Of Terrans and Tabletops

**TW: mentions of physical abuse**

* * *

Only, as it turned out, they're not.

Fucked, that is. Because as irritating and dumb and soft (and quick and bold and irrepressibly, disgustingly optimistic) as the Terran kid is, his daddy don't much seem to want him back. By the time a Terran year's rolled by, Yondu's starting to wonder if he imagined the whole scene with the Spartax embassy. Dramatic lighting, sombre backstory and all. Maybe he's just abducted a random brat for shits and giggles.

By the time five years have passed, Peter's filling out into a solid teenager with a knack for making the Ravager flagship do things no humble smuggling vessel should do and an eye for bartering that rivals Kraglin's. Yondu's sure he either suffered a mental breakdown on his last fly-by of Terra that everybody refuses to talk about, or Emperor J'son of Spartax is playing the universe's cruellest prank.

 _Go abduct a Terran,_ he said. _It'll be fun,_ he said.

Or perhaps it was something else entirely – a dorky old nemesis who thought it'd be a barrel of laughs to parcel himself and his bosom buddies up in glossy red and gold robes, foist some random earth brat off on him, and thoroughly decimate Yondu's reputation. Because as much as he refuses to show the kid any favouritism, people still _talk_ , and the gossip circles of the galactic underworld are churning out stories about how _the big bad Ravagers Commander adopted a wee Terran boy_ faster than Yondu can kill the perpetrators.

Some of 'em are even saying he's the dad. Dumb fuckers.

But force people into close quarters for a certain amount of time – or, in this case, throw a scrawny Terran into a dorm with five Ravagers who never forgave and never forgot, and want head and Walkman mounted on spikes; four who couldn't care much either way; and ten who look on him as nothing more than a glorified lunchbox – and they'll have to either get along or murder each other. As Yondu's made it very clear that any murdering's liable to result in a whole lot more, the former tends to be the more popular option.

Still, to say Peter and the Ravager crew are on friendly terms is an exaggeration further than Yondu's imagination can stretch. But they tolerate each other. Even occasionally watch each other's backs in the field. It ain't smiles and handshakes by any means – mostly because Peter's getting a reputation for having sticky fingers and a mouth that's a fair sight bigger than his brain. But Yondu likes to think the beatings are toughening him up. Maybe not instilling _sense_ in him – kid's utterly devoid of that – but at least he's learnt the most important trick of the trade: don't get caught. And if you do, blag with all your heart.

The third step in this scenario, should the blagging fall through, doesn't come quite as naturally.

Shame the Terran's so squeamish. He could've saved himself a dozen thrashings by now – not to mention culled half of the more irritating members of Yondu's crew – if he only had the guts to pull the trigger.

But that's why he turns a blind eye when the kid goes skulking through the corridors with skin mottled bluer than his, shiners standing out like the hinder ends of two glossy ripe aubergines. Even when he comes and lurks right by the captain's chair, turning his busted lips to the light like he _wants_ Yondu to notice, like he wants him to prance down from his throne like some decorated Nova general and smite the injustice from his ranks.

Well, that ain't gonna happen.

But the kid keeps hoping, and Yondu can't help but notice the way Horuz side-eyes him in the corridors like he expects an arrow through his skull. Yondu's half-tempted to put it there. The Ravagers aren't expected to fight clean. It would undermine the whole point of being rascally space pirates if they challenged every opponent to a formal duel. And anyway, if you ask Yondu, 'pick on someone your own size' runs anti-grain to the whole strong-eat-weak hierarchy of the place, not to mention the universe in general.

But still. Who gets their kicks from smacking some Terran around? Even if he don't know when to keep his mouth shut? That ain't _sport_ , that's just pathetic.

Yondu restrains himself though – if only because if he takes matters into his own hands here, who's to say that Peter won't be pouting for him to solve every damn scrape he gets into? No. While he ain't no subscriber to _Parenting Monthly_ , he's fairly certain that when a brat's acting up, indulging them is the last thing you do.

And so, he puts up with it. It's annoying, it's awkward as heck, and by the third day Yondu's sick of the forlorn, bruised shadow that clings to his back, not to mention having to pretend to be absurdly engrossed in polishing his knickknacks whenever the kid's on the bridge just to give him somewhere else to look.

It's when the kid's tailed him back to his room and is hovering at the end of the corridor like some particularly pestilent space-parasite that Yondu decides to put his foot down.

" _Alright_ ," he says. Storms back down the corridor. Grabs Peter by the nearest ear and drags him into the relative privacy of his quarters, kid yelping and struggling the whole way. "You and me, boy, we're gonna have a _talk_."

The talk goes something like this: Peter attempts to look tough and like he doesn't know what he's in trouble for, while Yondu stretches himself leisurely over his chair and mentally curses fucking _Prince J'son_ of fucking _Spartax_ into a black hole and back again, because this sure as hell ain't what he signed up for. And _sure_ , he was the one who'd made the decision to keep the kid. Yeah, yeah.

It had taken him approximately a week to regret it, when the damn brat had received his Walkman complete with swanky new space-proofing and a 99% efficiency circuit system that ran off solar power. But by the time they'd shown up at the rendezvous, Kraglin snickering in his ear and muttering 'I told you so, I fucking told you' the entire way, the Spartax fleet was long gone. No one seemed to know where. In fact, no one Yondu had talked to had even known where Spartax _was_ – which hadn't helped with the niggling feeling that he'd fallen completely off his rocker, marbles rolling away down cracks in the floorboards and under the skirting boards, never to be seen again.

Apparently, alien princes didn't do second chances. So, seeing as dropping the kid back home with a 'Sorry for late delivery' tag stapled to his arm was out, Yondu had figured he might as well teach the brat to be useful.

Starting with eliminating this weird idea the kid has, that Yondu actually gives a damn.

"You gotta learn to clean up your own messes," Yondu begins. Peter look stubbornly unrepentant. He rubs his smarting ear, which is blossoming to clash with the swollen lump of ground-beef that generous folk might call an eye.

"Don't know what you're talking about."

"Oh, so you're a liar as well as a wimp? And a general pain in my ass?"

"Isn't that Kraglin's job, sir?" asks Peter. Then his eyes flicker to the door like he's wondering how far he can get before there's an arrow stuck in his back. If he'd given into the urge then, he might have made it. Because for once, Yondu's actually too surprised to react. By the time he does, it's too late to kill the kid – it'd just be sloppy; might look like he'd _hesitated_ before skewering him through like the useless cut of Terran meat he is.

So Yondu rocks back on the chair's single trunk-like suspension leg, and barks out a laugh that makes Peter's spine stiffen.

"You," he says, wagging his finger at the teen, "have far too much gob and not enough brain to know when to keep it closed. Anyone ever told you that?" Peter relaxes minutely, but keeps the yaka arrow in his sights.

"'Bout twice a day, sir."

"And you wonder why Horuz smacks you round." This time, the look on Peter's face is torn between the expression of a child caught hiding pieces of a shattered dashboard piece, and a stranded cosmonaut who's just seen a ship come chugging round the corner of the nearest asteroid. He finally settles on the latter, and the hope is so blindingly trusting that Yondu's resolve almost withers before he remembers what he's here to do and slaps it roughly back into shape.

"You… know about that?" The kids thumb is teasing the headphone jack of his Walkman; the earpieces are looped round his neck, their thin wire semi-circle buried beneath the abundance of ginger-blonde curls sprouting from his scalp. And from his chin. And his cheeks. Yondu grimaces. High time he employed Kraglin to teach the kid how to wield a razor, before he starts being mistaken for a pet.

"Course I do. You been walkin' round looking like a beaten wife for a whole damn week – it don't take a genius."

"Oh." Peter shuffles his boots over the floor. That hopeful expression wavers. "You. Uh, you didn't say anything." Then in a smaller voice, which cracks in a way that has nothing to do with deepening vocal chords – "You never say anything."

Yondu abruptly wishes he had some alcohol.

"And what," he asks, "do you expect me to say?" Peter flings his arms out.

"I don't know! Something! Anything! They'd stop if you told them to!" His face is a tight mask of betrayal. How long has this been brewing, Yondu wonders? Festering under the surface, like a wound beneath dirty leathers.

Yondu leans forwards, clasping his hands over his knees, and eyes Peter coolly.

"I ain't fighting your battles for you, kid. Not now. Not ever." Predictably, that makes the Terran bristle.

"And I'm not a kid anymore! Hell Yondu, I'm fifteen – haven't I earned the right to be, I don't know, called by my _actual name_ yet?"

Is this a teenager thing? It's gotta be a teenage thing.

If he'd had a bottle, he'd have crushed it in that moment. Or tossed it at the brat's stupid, ginger head. Because that's what he is; a brat, and a damn ungrateful one.

All things considered, it's probably for the best that they're on half-rations: two days of meagre meals and single sips of fluid before the next station, and not a drop of liquor left on ship. Yondu has trouble curbing his temper at the best of times; dealing with a teenage Terran while inebriated might sound more _fun_ , but it would end a thousand times worse for Peter, not to mention his décor, and well, Yondu hasn't kept him alive all these years for the hell of it.

You never know when a certain jerkass Spartoi emperor might change his mind.

"You better watch that mouth, boy," he warns softly. One hand readjusts the arrow where it rests under his coat. He doesn't uncover it, not yet; just brushes his fingers slowly down its shaft to draw the boy's attention. "It'll be a whole lot harder to show off that wit o'yours if you don't have a tongue."

"I'm not a _boy_ anymore either," Peter mutters under his breath. However, he's smart enough to pretend innocence and shake his head when Yondu tells him to speak up. When he next speaks it comes out slow and stilted, and his hoarse voice threatens to shake on every other word. "It's just. You knew. I can't believe you knew. And you didn't _do_ anything."

"Didn't realise I was your bodyguard, kid."

"You're not! I mean, I don't expect you to be. Just –" And Peter trails off again, lacing his fingers over where he's got the Walkman clipped to his belt. He makes an art-form out of not meeting Yondu's eyes. Yondu in turn clicks his fingernails on the chair-arm and waits with badly disguised impatience. Damn kid can't finish a whole sentence; how does he expect to be respected by the crew?

But when Peter gathers whatever shreds of courage – or perhaps foolhardiness – that are still lurking in him, he raises his chin defiantly and Yondu is reminded of why he kept the brat around in the first place. "You could have stopped it," he repeats, firmer. "You could've."

Yondu'll give that one. "Yeah, I could've." He holds up a hand when Peter makes to continue the prosecution. "But I didn't. Ever stop to ask yourself why?" That makes the kid pause. Then hunch his shoulders sulkily, hiding behind his ample mane.

"Dunno. _Toughening me up_ , or something?" Now, Yondu doesn't like the way he says that. Like he thinks Yondu's in the wrong here. And for what? Trying to mould some weedy little half-Terran who ain't even blood into someone who'll last five minutes in the big, bad galaxy? No. He pulls his lips back from his discoloured teeth.

"Damn right. Shame it's not working." Rather than being cowed as he'd hoped, the kid has the nerve to wriggle a little straighter in his boots and hoist his nose into the air.

"My mum always said I respond better to positive enforcement."

"Well, when you're stayin' under her roof and eatin' her home cookin', you can get all the _positive fucking enforcement_ you need." Something crumples in Peter then. He turns big, wounded eyes onto his captain, like he's just caught him shooting babies out of the airlock for clay pigeon practice. "Oh _hell_. What's your problem now?"

"My mum's dead," Peter says. And how could Yondu have forgotten that? Damn brat'd spent his first fortnight weeping over it, hadn't he?

Oh yeah. That's how. He doesn't give a shit.

"Yeah?" Yondu replies acidly. "I betcha want me to do something about that too, huh? Just snap my fingers and pull Peter's poor dead momma outta the grave. Sure. No problem. Give me five minutes to wrestle the Infinity Gem of Death off Thanos' hand, why don't you?" Peter blinks.

"Who's Thanos?"

"Never you mind. Point is, ain't no one in this galaxy who don't have a sob story tucked up their sleeve. You're no special snowflake, sweetheart." The kid's confused expression peals away, replaced by the anger.

"And you're – what? Making sure I've got a sob-story to match?"

"Don't start that with me, boy! I stopped 'em eating you, what, how many times?"

" _That doesn't count!_ " Peter yells. His voice jolts a couple of octaves in his frustration – Yondu can't help but snicker. Here he is, sat in his unofficial office, having a fucking _father-son talk_ with a squeaky Terran whose vocal chords are jerking about like puppet strings and whose brain's about as woolly as his hair. (Scratch that. Not a father-to-son. Definitely not. Nope. More of a captain-to-cabin-boy talk; or better yet: captain-to-team-mascot. Kid's about as useless as one. Might have to see about lashing him to the front of the flagship as a figurehead, if he keeps acting up.)

Yondu's about to share that delightful image – say what he might about Peter, but the kid's a font of inspiration for coming up with new death threats, most of which the captain likes to test on him before adapting for use on various suppliers, servicemen and travelling trinket salesmen – when Peter does something he's never done before. Something so utterly and absolutely inconceivable that Yondu is, for the second time in as many minutes, entirely stumped for words.

He storms out.

Now, that might be expected in a Xanderian finishing school for troubled teens (which even Yondu will admit, Peter most definitely is). But that's not how things work here. Not by a long shot.

That settles it then. Kid's gotta die.

Yondu pushes himself up from the chair in a sleek roll, arrow humming at his waist, and makes for the door – then changes his mind. People've been telling him to off the kid for decades; to actually _do_ it would be far too predictable. Playing into their hands, really. Anyway, he's in a generous mood today – or was, before the kid started speaking back. Better to have Peter come to him. Give him at least a chance to salvage his future while Yondu decides whether or not to skewer him like he's Horuz's favourite kebab.

"Peter!" he roars. "Get back here!" There's a terrified 'meep' from beyond the door – kid's had the sense not to stray further, or else was paralysed by the crippling realisation of what he'd done the moment he heard the lock clank into place behind him. It's followed by a patter of retreating footsteps – Yondu tenses, arrow shivering, and forces himself to give the spooked brat just one more minute. He listens until he can't hear them anymore. Then listens some more as they tentatively tiptoe back into earshot.

"Yes?" comes Peter's voice, filtering through the door. You can _taste_ the empty bravado. "You want something?"

Yondu sighs.

"In here."

"Right." The biolock engages. Buzzes its approval – Yondu did, of course, remove Peter's palm print from the system right after the first Walkman fiasco (which is never to be repeated under any circumstances, or to be brought up in casual conversation, damn it Kraglin, I said _no_ ), but over the years he's given Peter punishment-detail of scrubbing the porthole so many times that there's more days that Peter has access to his quarters than otherwise. The door glides a fraction of an inch on silent, weighted hinges. Peter pushes it the rest of the way before shuffling inside. He shoots Yondu a barrage of timid side-eyes.

"Alright," Yondu says, once he's let the silence stretch long enough to make Peter twitch. "We're gonna continue our lil' heart-to-heart, boy. And we're gonna do it _without_ screaming at each other or storming off. Or else one of us is going to end up minus a coupla favourite fingers." Peter shudders.

"Gotcha."

"Glad to hear it. Now, next time Horuz hits you, what're you gonna do?"

"Um…" It isn't a question Peter's been expecting. He cards fingers through his hair, pulls on the curling ends – a habit all creatures cursed with tresses seem to pick up at some stage or another; should swap it out for an implant, they're _much_ more practical. Then he spends a good half-minute gnawing contemplatively on his lip, before finally settling on "punch him back?" Yondu snorts.

"Heck no. You'll be annihilated." Peter's face brightens.

"Come to you?" he hazards. That earns him a sideways squint.

"You kiddin' with me, boy? Tryin' to be funny? Or did you just not listen to one damn word I said?" Swallowing hard, Peter shakes his head. His fingers find the Play button in their nervous jittering, and the dulcet tones of _Come And Get Your Love_ filter through the air before he pats himself down in a panic and hastily clicks it off. The music cuts halfway through a beat.

"No. No sir. Okay. No snitching. What then…?" After repeatedly rubbing his chin and coming up blank, he finally looks to Yondu for help. Who gives him a dastardly grin – made all the more dastardly by the various gold caps and splintered fragments that replace a once-full jaw of teeth – and leans into the kid's personal space to impart a nugget of wisdom.

" _You volunteer to clean his boots_." He steps back to let that sink in. Peter, expecting a confidential fisticuffs technique from Yondu's chequered youth, or better yet, a vial of venom to slip into Horuz's morning slops, is disappointed to say the least.

"I – what? Did I hear you right?"

"Did you hear me tell you to clean his boots?"

"Uh-huh."

"Then you heard me right." Peter mulls the words, repeating them quietly to himself as if he thinks that by dissecting them syllable-by-diphthong he'll uncover their hidden meaning. Eventually, he admits defeat.

"Okay, I'll bite. How's that supposed to help me? Won't he just hit me more, if he gets clean boots out of it?"

Yondu glares at him fiercely.

"Did I say you were going to _actually_ clean them, boy?"

Peter concedes with a huff. "So you want me to get punched by Horuz, tell him I'm going to clean his boots and then – _not_ clean his boots? Wow, sir. You've really outdone yourself this time."

"Cut the lip. And don't be stupid. Of course you're going to clean his boots."

"But you just said –"

"You're going to clean his boots so damn well he doesn't notice the ground up Silarthan pepper-beetle you've dusted inside the toecaps." Peter's expression, which has thus far been contorted into the profoundly dubious, now lights up like a docking bay in festival season. "At least," continues Yondu "he won't notice until said ground up Silarthan pepper-beetle works its way through his socks. Which, for reference, takes about fifteen to twenty minutes of walking. Five to ten if he's goin' any faster. _Then_ he'll notice. Trust me."

Peter fucking _beams_.

"By which time, if we're heading out on a job, he'll be surrounded by his team! So everyone'll see him hopping around like a Centipedian that's had ninety of its legs shot off! That's _brilliant_!" But Yondu shakes his head adamantly.

"No. If it's gonna happen, it's gonna happen on ship. I ain't havin' you compromising my boys' jobs for a bit of vengeance." Peter's jubilance dilutes, but doesn't fade entirely.

"So, if I keep the fallout confined to the ship, I actually have your permission to do this?" he asks.

Yondu can't help it. He bursts out laughing.

He guffaws until his guts ache. When he's finally stopped – Peter stops trying to join in after the first thirty seconds, after which it just becomes awkward – he has to hold himself upright on the desk so that he can wipe a tear from his eye.

"That's priceless. Permission? _Permission_? We're Ravagers, boy! We don't need permission!" Then his face darkens, in one of those uncanny split-second transitions that he mastered days after naming himself Captain. "Just like we don't need others to win our fights for us. And we don't ask 'em to. You got that?" Soberer now – hopefully it'll stop him doing something ridiculously amateur, like stealing a whole fucking crate of Silarthan pepper-bugs at the next port, which, idiot or not, Horuz _will_ notice – Peter nods. It's good enough. It'll have to be. Yondu claps his hands. " _Fan-fucking-tastic_. We're all done here – so if you ain't got nothing more to say, get outta my room and go find someone else to bother." Peter makes to obey. Pauses on the threshold.

"Sir? Only one more thing…" Yondu, not expecting addendums to what was, he considers, a rousing yet educative speech, surveys the teen with vague trepidation. If he gives him any more disrespect… Well, even if it means Kraglin wins that damn bet on how long the kid'll last (his estimate of five years, four months and three days, being the current closest) and brags for the next millennia, Yondu's putting an arrow through his eye right there and then. Heck, he might do it now, if the kid don't stop with the coy act and _finishes what he's goddam saying._

"Spit it out then!"

So Peter does.

"That was such a fake laugh," the boy accuses. "So obviously fake. So fake, I swear to God. You sounded like… You sounded like a really big cat. A really big cat that was being run over by a steamroller." He's gone before Yondu can deny it, or ask what a steamroller is (or a cat, for that matter) so that he can determine whether it's an arrow-worthy insult or otherwise. The door swings shut behind him. When Yondu doesn't hear the lock click on, he looks up – only to find it being propped open by a long-fingered hand.

"Silarthan pepper-bugs, huh?" Yondu snorts, and kicks his boots off.

"Hi, Kraglin. Nice to see ya. How's your day been?"

"Sorry, you wanted small talk sir? Lemme just pop out and find our bonding ring – musta taken it off when I was interrogatin' that Nova Corps kid. Who, by the way, either don't know nothin' or ain't as fond of her kneecaps as most folks are."

"You're meant to say 'fine, thank you, how was yours?' Then I can complain about how I've been stalked all day by a dumb brat who thinks I'm some kind of _defender of the weak_ , and you can complain about how borin' life is when you're stuck on ship two days until the next job with nothing to do but break sweet lil' Nova-girl's fingers, and you ain't even allowed to rip nobody's spine out –"

"Not unless they _really_ annoy you," says Kraglin easily.

"-Not unless they _really_ annoy me, and then I can ask how stocks are running and you can tell me and we can natter on about work and ration allowances for the rest of the night-cycle. Or we can strip down right now and fuck."

"How about we skip ahead to that last bit?" Kraglin suggests. Yondu grins.

"Thought you'd never ask."

* * *

One week later, Nova-girl has been ransomed back to her commander for three hundred units (plus an additional five hundred on both of their bounties, which Kraglin is inordinately proud about). The ship's lumbering its way through a sleepy mid-morning shift. The last job went off without a hitch, everybody important is present, correct, and operating at an adequate level of brain function, and Yondu reckons that he and his first mate deserve a celebration.

"Bed?" Kraglin asks, breathless. His skinny arms are wound around Yondu's neck. Ragged fingernails scrape the implant; Yondu moans wetly against Kraglin's skin and grinds their pelvises in a tight, hot circle.

"Desk?" he answers. Laughs when Kraglin matches his grin.

His grand idea, however, turns out to be easier in theory than practice.

"Fuck," mutters Yondu as he stubs his toe on the chair leg. For the second time. Walking would perhaps be simpler if either deigned to let go of the other for more than a second. But also, as they wordlessly agree, far less fun. Anyway, Yondu figures feeling like someone just parked their spaceship on his foot ain't too much of a chore if it means he can keep hearing Kraglin make those _noises_ when he nibbles the circles of sensitive skin that surround his tattoos.

When they've finally made it, shedding clothes and weapons over the bare chrome parqueting like pollen from a Fauna Colossus, Yondu breaks contact with a harsh nip, and turns to shunt his ever-growing mound of datapads and scribble-smothered astral charts to one side.

Kraglin takes advantage of the opportunity as much as Yondu gives it. He presses in, flush to Yondu's back so that not a millimetre of space remains between them, and runs his fangs over the bumps and knobbles of his neck. White rubs blue as the first mate curls fingers around Yondu's wrists and pushes them forwards, out over the table – Yondu's upper body follows until his torso's resting fully on the glossy metal. The edge digs in, just beneath the line of his pouch. Wincing, he shuffles forwards until he can rest his hips against it and brace himself up on his elbows.

Kraglin follows.

He's a sweltering weight on his back, comprised of jutting bones stitched together with ropy muscle, and tendons that run like steel wire beneath his skin. The heat of his body, forever a few degrees hotter than Yondu's own, is concentrated towards his groin. As he shifts – inserting a knobbly patella between Yondu's thighs while his hands slide back along the slopes of his captain's body, squeezing and kneading the meat of his biceps and upper back – his hips tilt and Yondu can suddenly feel the _whole length_ of him, rubbing the cleft of his ass and bumping sporadically against his tailbone. A few premature beads squeeze out. Kraglin thumbs them away, humming appreciatively when the motion smears pearly liquid over Yondu's vivid blue skin. Yondu in turn presses his chest down and bows himself back against Kraglin. He snickers when he hears his breath catch in his throat.

"Hi sailor," he says. "Come here often?"

"Not," replies Kraglin, "as often as I'd like." And he – very, very daringly – swats Yondu's ass.

For a skinny guy, Kraglin hits _hard_.

Yondu, unprepared for the blow, yelps and scrabbles for purchase. He's readying himself to be pissed but the forwards motion drags his dick over the desk's hard contours, and, well, there might not be no give, but friction is friction. Even if the desk's rapidly becoming a slick mess of sweat and pre-cum… Well, Yondu's gotten off on weirder things. The guy currently rubbing over the red-hot handprint he left on his ass (which he'll pay for, if Yondu can still feel it come morning. Just… not right now) probably counts.

"If you don't stick those fingers in me _this second_ , I'mma carve out your liver and feed it to Horuz." Kraglin hastens to obey.

"Y'know, sir?" he says conversationally, as he digs a pot of slick from the first drawer of Yondu's desk. "I can never tell when you're joking."

Yondu, wriggling back against him impatiently, pauses long enough to roll his eyes. "Well, I ain't joking now. Fingers."

"You're the boss, boss." When Kraglin inserts the first digit he receives a grunt and an order to 'hurry it up, ain't no damn pussy', and so the next is jammed in besides and scissored with little preamble.

" _Now_ we're talking," Yondu says – moans really, _shut up_ – when he feels the sting. It's not all that great at first; never is really, unless you count the anticipation for what's to come. There's always this uncomfortable jostling phase that sparks his instincts to clamp down because _that shouldn't be going in there_. Makes the muscles in his lower back cramp up. But all is rapidly forgotten when Kraglin, guided by years of experience, bumps his nail against _that_ particular patch and sends a jolting wave of pleasure cascading through him, melting the tension from his shoulders and lighting him up from implant to toes. _"Oh-"_

"Ready for another?" Kraglin asks, ever the gentleman. Or the first mate, who ain't too keen on receiving a lashing when his captain can't walk the next day. Yondu nods vigorously. His implant's glowing in quick bright pulses, and his thighs squeeze and flex around Kraglin's.

" _Damn_ ," he hisses, when Kraglin's got all three seated and is pumping them in and out at a firm, steady pace. Kraglin bends down to fasten teeth to the back of Yondu's neck while his captain's too blissed out to snap at him, and gathers the blue skin into his mouth. He lets his tongue roll against it, warm and slippery, then abruptly drags his little fangs over the flesh and sucks hard enough to bruise. "Okay, okay, if this is all the prelude to the big act, lad, I'm – ah! – kinda, uh _eager_ , for whatever you've got in store. Yeah." It's embarrassing how difficult it is to focus on speaking and breathing, while he's ramming himself back against Kraglin's bony knuckles and simultaneously grinding down on the tabletop. Yondu makes a valiant effort nevertheless. The feel of Kraglin smiling against his neck makes the jumbled speech worth it.

"Aw, ain't nothing too fancy sir," his first mate says. A beaded string of spittle connects his lips to the brutalized skin of Yondu's throat; it glistens clinquant in the half-light. "Just gonna keep this up, make you squirm, maybe jerk you off a bit…" And Yondu feels his other hand walking downwards. Kraglin squeezes his cock at the base, traces ragged nails up the underside and starts pumping at a counter-rhythm to his thrusts.

"Gonna eke it out, nice 'n slow. Until you're begging for it. Until you're shovin' that tight blue ass back like you wanna ram it straight onto my cock…" Scraping his nails over the desk, Yondu hangs his head and watches his ragged breaths mist and fade on the warming metal. This pose elongates the stretch of his spine, and concentrates his entire focus on the feeling; those fingers behind as they send jolt after jolt blazing through him, and those fingers in front wringing him closer to orgasm with each deft stroke. Kraglin keeps on speaking, interspersing his words with nips that are going to leave Yondu's shoulders looking like an asteroid-battered satellite come morning. "'M gonna keep playin' with ya, sir, as long as you can bear. Longer. Until you _order_ me to fuck you."

For a guy who prefers lurking at the fringes of the bridge like a creepy, hairy skeleton with a fondness for knives, the bastard is damn _excellent_ at dirty talk.

"So," continues Kraglin, running those damned dextrous fingers along his cock and dipping down to lift and squeeze his balls, "I'll do it. I'll fuck ya. Ain't got a choice, right? You're the captain. What you say goes."

"Huh," Yondu gasps. "S'almost like you, like you a-actually _listen_ when I'm talkin'."

"Of course! I am yer first mate, ain't I?"

Kraglin flicks the tight skin above Yondu's groin in mock-chastisement. Snorting, Yondu pushes his ass back in a wordless demand for Kraglin's other hand to continue its assault. It obeys. "So then, when I'm finally inside you – _all_ the way inside, so deep ya can pract'cally _taste_ the head of my cock – I'm gonna fuck ya so the whole damn ship hears this desk bouncin' and clatterin' off the wall. How'd you like that, sir?"

He doesn't need to see Kraglin to imagine the half-smile that's crooking up one corner of his lips. It's not the sharkish 'I'm gonna put a knife between your eyes' grin that Kraglin gets when he smells a fight in the brewing, and it's not the sneer he dons whenever they're dealing with nosy Nova operatives; it's a different expression entirely, one that only appears in moments of genuine happiness, and which – Yondu likes to think – Kraglin reserves for when they're alone.

"What're you grinnin' about?" he asks over his shoulder. "Ya look like you're about to take a bite outta me. Another one." That earns him a chuckle. Kraglin extracts his hand from Yondu's cock – to the owner's vocal displeasure – and instead uses it to spread the cheeks of his ass, giving himself a clear view of his fingers as they slide in and out.

"Most of 'em probably reckon I'm the one bent over right now," he says and Yondu, feeling the air brush across his tingling perineum, gives a full-body shiver. "That get you off, sir? Ship thinkin' you're the one callin' the shots, when you're actually face-first over yer own desk, about to get rammed silly by your second-in-command? Huh?"

And that… That he can't ignore. As tempting as it is. Yondu pushes himself onto his elbows and cranes his neck to frown at the man currently occupied with hitting his prostate on every thrust.

"I _always_ call the shots, lad. Don't you forget it."

This time, Kraglin's laugh is less genuine. He doesn't meet his captain's eyes, and when his fingers overshoot Yondu's swollen gland and jab painfully at his insides it's not as accidental as his muttered apology would have Yondu believe. Bracing himself on his burning arms, Yondu doesn't let his shoulders sag until Kraglin's returned to the established rhythm. He'll let it slide. This time.

"Come on," he grunts when the silence stretches too long. He arches his back until the curve of his ass is neatly filling Kraglin's palm and the muscles in his sides _sing_. "Don't sulk on me now. Ship ain't big enough for both you _and_ the boy." Kraglin huffs.

"D'you really have to talk about him? Here?"

"Why?" Yondu can't hide the glee in his voice. "Jealous?" Kraglin doesn't answer. He does, however, give him another pelvis-cracker of a spank. " _Fucking hell_ -"

"You like it, sir," says Kraglin with that overconfident lilt to his voice that he's been developing recently, and which Yondu would probably put a stop to if the man wasn't so goddam _right_. So Yondu, unable to justify denial, distracts himself with a low growl.

"I'd like it a lot more if yer skinny fingers got ousted by something a tad bigger."

"Only a tad?" The palm returns to knead and scratch its burning print. Yondu winces; snickers under his breath.

"Don't flatter yourself too much, lad."

"Well…" And Kraglin ruts his cock along Yondu's inseam – having being neglected in favour of his captain's needs, it's flagging slightly, but nothing a quick tug or two won't cure – letting him feel the hot velvet length of it. "If you'll 'scuse me sayin' so, captain, you're looking damn excited for my _tad_." Yondu doesn't contradict him. He is, however, getting impatient – the pleasure Kraglin's wreaking through him is raw and potent, but it's not enough. He wants more. Wants that electrifying thrust and slide, that slick filthy squelch as their bodies meet and pull apart from one another like magnets being spun on their poles.

And what Yondu wants…

"You've said a lot o'words," he says finally. Feels Kraglin's fingers pause, and grins in anticipation. "Time to live up to them."

"Even with my tad?"

"Oh, just _fuck_ me already, will ya?"

So of course – of _course_ , because if there are any deities floating about in this godforsaken galaxy they've got a sadistic disregard for a certain space pirate duo's collectively quadruple case of blue balls (one being moderately less figurative than the other) - that's when it happens.

"I'm going to kill you! You snivelling piece of Terran slime!"

Kraglin freezes. Yondu, who's been entertaining a niggling suspicion that something like this might happen since the lock clicked on behind them (which he refused to acknowledge, on the basis that if he did it was only more likely to occur out of cosmic spite) bangs his head on the table.

"You didn't invite Horuz for a threesome, did ya sir?" asks Kraglin, just to be sure. Yondu, rubbing the new bruise on his browbone, scrunches up his nose in disgust. "Take that as a no." A second voice echoes from the hallway outside of their room. Again it's instantly familiar, but this one sounds far too pleased with itself for its own good.

"Innocent until proven guilty, you hairy shitstain!"

"He's better at insults," Kraglin notes. Yondu concedes the point with a shrug.

"Ain't much competition."

"I know you did it," bellows Horuz. There's a clatter of boots on steel, a yelp, and a snarl of animal frustration – apparently, Peter's dodged Horuz's rush by the skin of his teeth. "I know it was you!"

"You got cameras on me while I scrub your boots, Horuz? Didn't know you felt that way about me!" Another snarl, this more rabid than the last. Yondu tenses. Kraglin, desk and the rest of it momentarily fades. He knows that noise. That's the noise Horuz makes when he's deadly serious. When he's going for the kill. Peter seems to realize too – because when he next speaks it's all in a panicked rush, words tumbling over each other in their desperation to stave off the inevitable - "Horuz? Horuz! You really really _really_ don't want to do that, Horuz?"

"And why," comes Horuz's guttural rumble, "is that?"

Kraglin nudges Yondu with his knee to get his attention. "You don't think he's gonna?"

"He better not." He does.

"Because… _Hey, Yondu_!"

That little shit. Shoulda parcelled him up for his daddy when he had the chance.

Yondu wriggles, not so much in a sexy way as a 'back off, I need to go stick the skulls of my imbecilic recruits together with my arrow' way. Thankfully (for his own sake), Kraglin is well-versed in his style of incandescent non-verbal communication and retreats without complaint.

"You're not actually going to kill them, are you sir?" his first mate asks uneasily, as they're pulling on whatever scattered items of clothing first come to hand. Yondu's face, when it emerges from the neck of his shirt, splits into a very wide and very nasty grin.

"Not," he says, "straightaway."

* * *

Later that night, the whole ship – excluding those who have an actual job to do, like manning the _Eclector_ 's twenty-four hour skeleton crew (although even they keep making excuses to abandon their posts on the bridge despite Yondu's increasingly violent dissuasion tactics) – are crowded into the main hanger bay, hooting and hollering like a gang of spaceball hooligans before a match. Yondu, situated at the front with the crowd, stands back and nods at his handiwork. Kraglin, who has spent the last minute circling the duo with the relentless glee of a hunting shark, sidles back to his side and stands close enough that their hands could brush.

"I dunno, captain. I don't reckon ya need to kill 'em after all. This'll be humiliatin' enough – especially once we upload the vidclips on the Xandarian infonet."

"Y'know, I might just agree with you there."

Peter and Horuz shoot them matching glares. Horuz's (who Yondu has deemed most likely to seek violent vengeance against his fellow sufferer the moment his back is turned, and who thus has the yaka arrow turning slow somersaults in front of his nose) is considerably more restrained – not to mention cross-eyed – than Peter's. The Terran boy looks like he might start spitting. Yondu frames them with his fingers and shows off his yellowed teeth. "Cute picture, ain't it?"

"So cute I reckon Corpsman Dey'll frame it up on his wall in his livin' room. Heck, I might even be tempted to hang a copy above the bridge myself! What d'you think, boy?"

Peter's ginger eyebrows crease up his forehead like a pruney toe after a sauna. "I thought you were going to _help_ me!" he hisses. As ever, Yondu's a slave to temptation – he steps up into Peter's personal space and drops a patronising pat right onto the kid's curly crown.

"Told ya already, kid. I ain't fighting your battles. And stop scrunchin' yer face like that – you'll get wrinkles, and Horuz'll have to find someone prettier to try and murder outside my room in the middle o'the night." Grimacing, Peter cranes away from the calloused blue hand. He can't escape completely though, and Yondu cackles, giving him another ruffle to make the space between the kid's freckles fill up with his furious flush. The two troublemakers have been placed besides one another on the rickety-legged stools that Yondu'd dragged down from the municipal bar, and (besides the stern order not to abandon their thrones come attack, hunger, or dire need for bladder relief) given a single command.

Hold hands.

The results are amusing to say the least. In fact, thinks Yondu as he leaves the men to their taunts and strides off through the _Eclector_ 's winding passageways, Kraglin slinking at his heels, everything has turned out better than expected. Sure, it don't make up for the amazing fuck he's missed. But he has a new piece of blackmail to add to his growing collection; one which it'll be no end of fun to dig out over the mess table when the boy starts actually bringin' the lasses home rather than just starin' at their tits when they lean over. And it's not like he and Kraglin are at deaths door – they always have tomorrow night.

Or not, as it turns out.

Yondu has just rolled Kraglin onto the mattress and pulled the blankets over them when he feels it. An awfully familiar burning sensation, gnawing its way up his calf. He squints at the sheets in horrified disbelief.

"No! No, he can't have… He wouldn't…"

"What? What is it?" Kraglin follows his eyes, and realizes he's sharing the pillow with the partly-crushed carcass of a Silarthan pepper beetle. His screech makes the ship shake from joists to bolts. But it's drowned by Yondu's roar:

" _QUILL!_ "

 **Hey folks~ Hope you're loving the story so far. It's Write_Like_An_American here from AO3. Tell me what you're thinking in the reviews! x**


	4. Ain't No Angel

**A word of warning** **– I haven't labelled this section as dubcon, because that's not how I intended it to be read. However, while I personally don't subscribe to good ol' Barthes' theory regarding dead authors I do respect that once a work is placed in the public eye one cannot control how it is interpreted. And so if people do feel strongly that the tags should be altered, feel free to inform me in the comments below using as many expletives, exclamations of disgust, and threats against my general person as you wish.**  
 **For now, just be aware that certain lines in the next two chapters may be mildly triggering.**

* * *

Yondu hasn't heard from Peter in over a week. He would say that he hasn't heard from him in seven days, four hours and forty-two-going-on-forty-three minutes, except that would mean he's been keeping count.

Which he hasn't.

Because he's not worried.

Not about the kid anyway. Kid can look out for himself. He's – well, he ain't really a _kid_ anymore (though like hell Yondu's gonna stop calling him that; at least, not until it stops making him fume). And anyway, Ravagers handle their own damn business. If Yondu didn't lift a finger to dissuade the crew from pushing the bratty little Terran round back when he was small enough not to punch back (and dumb enough not to wreak itchy vengeance), he sure ain't running to his rescue just because Quill's forgotten how to press the transmissions button on his comlink.

But this job's _big_. Bigger than anything Quill's pulled before. And Yondu's starting to wonder if leaving one relatively inexperienced Terran in charge of retrieving the bauble that'll be feeding them for the next stellar-cycle - and one who's been developing a worrying _conscience_ as of late – is such a grand idea.

Still, there ain't nothing to be done about it. Not now. Boy'll ring soon. Then Yondu can alleviate some frustration by chewing him a new one and threatening to renege on his promise to keep him off the menu. Boy'll pout; think up some barmy excuse. Blast his music full-volume through the night cycle when Yondu puts him on graveyard shift. Life'll go back to normal.

Until then, they just have to wait.

So. Here they are.

Yondu sits in his chair on the _Eclector_ 's bridge, enthroned amid effervescent lights as the holocharts and control displays glance off the jumble of knickknaks that're strung from the ceiling over his head. He's planning an assault on a trading outpost. It's easy pickings: their defences're practically non-existent to interior attack. Should be able to scope, bust and escape all in the same cycle. Sure, they've got their anti-spacecraft assault rifles and their fat bottomed flak cannons that can punch a hole through the prow of every vessel that ain't a goddam Kree warship; but once you're in, you're in, and there's not an alarm in sight. Heck, all they gotta do's sneak past the guards, and they can strip it to the bones.

Yondu is thoroughly engrossed in counting potential ambush points and mapping out the routes that'll avoid the heaviest patrols. Far too buried in his work to distract himself with thoughts of Peter. He pours over the charts like they're centrefolds from _Galactic Pin-up Weekly_ , and he doesn't worry in the slightest.

He doesn't worry once in the three hours between rolling out of his berth and Shorro blaring the buzzer. The buzzer means breakfast's out and will taste marginally better before it decomposes from oxygen exposure. Problem with restocking your larder from dirt-cheap pirated goods is that you never know when you're gettin' Xandarian haute cuisine, or when you're padding your hold with eighty crates of lumpy turd-stew from a submarine civilisation who've never strayed above the surface and like everything to taste the same flavour of mulched jockstrap.

Yondu chomps through with the mechanical ease of one who's eaten much worse. Then proceeds to not worry for the next two hours, until the shifts switch and a bunch of dreary-eyed Ravagers slouch out to be replaced by a negligibly livelier load.

He even manages to squeeze in an extra five minutes of not-worrying during his loo break.

In fact, he doesn't worry so much that it's only when Kraglin slopes up to snoop over his shoulder that he remembers he's supposed to be working as well, and that this whole 'not worrying' shtick really takes up too much concentration to be worth any sane person's time.

"Captain," says Kraglin carefully. He manages to pack the two syllables with a veritable thesaurus. Yondu dismisses the assault plan – pitifully unadorned since the last time he had Kraglin look it over – with a surly wave.

"Not a word."

Kraglin sighs. "Yes, sir."

It's fairly quiet on the bridge, which means his crew're too busy to bug him unless it's _really_ important. Currently, everyone's faffing over the engine readouts: long spiels of holographic numbers flickering through the filtered air. They took a nasty hit last week, and they've had to watch the rad-levels with a magnifying glass to ensure there ain't no upcoming flare that'll fry them all while they sleep.

Yondu doesn't know why they're all so het up. If there were gonna be a flare, they'd only have three minutes to rouse the crew and head for the escape pods. And given the layout of the ship, there ain't no chance of anyone on the bridge getting out uncrisped anyway.

He's wise enough not to point that out though. Maybe afterwards, when they're able to run her at full power again without the power components giving out that awful, ominous _whistle_ , and they're all swigging the poshest booze units can buy on the winnings from Peter's latest solo. Which ain't gonna be nothing to scoff at – if the boy ever picks up his comm, of course.

Kraglin remains by his side, a silent shadow. He unrolls a pixelated fortress of star chart holograms, triangulating astral positions and tweaking the controls to keep them on course, cross-referencing their position with the projection on the radar. His brows're crinkled up in concentration; his teeth slowly worry his lower lip. Yondu lets him work, sinking into his chair. Then –

"It _is_ a fairly tough mission." Kraglin nods along. Prods something that protests with a shrill drone, flinches, and hastily sets it to rights again. Yondu doesn't notice. "High calibre, that is. Breaking into an abandoned temple on Morag – heck, who knows what he's gonna find? I mean, ain't like any of _us'd_ have a problem, but the boy's still young. It'll take a bit longer than his usual bust-and-grab, if he wants to do it right."

"Peter ain't too smart. But he's a good thief, sir. Occasionally." Kraglin's got his back to him, talking while tapping the charts. Yondu keeps half an ear open as he plucks a dangling figurine – this a tacky souvenir-stall model of Nova Prime Rael, hair-twirl and all – from the overhang, and makes it turn thoughtful cartwheels in front of his nose. "He was with us at Krazgar, weren't he? And he made that bust on Dathrogg all on his lonesome – or, well, with Thrabba for a partner, which's pretty much the same thing. He know's what he's doin'."

"He's still an idiot." Nova Prime's limbs rotate considerably further than they would on the original. "And if he's got himself tangled up in a laser-net again, I'm quarterin' his cut. At least."

"He'll be fine." Kraglin's careful to keep his tone neutral, but Yondu's on the defensive and he bristles anyway.

"I _know_ ," he snaps. Twists Rael's malleable kneecaps with a little more ferocity. "It's the cargo I'm worried about."

"Right, sir."

"Boy's been off his game lately." The ' _after I let him name his own ship_ ' goes unsaid. Peter's had itchy feet for a while now, and Yondu's starting to suspect that getting the _Milano_ might have been the tipping straw. Hell, though. If he _has_ gone AWOL, he couldn't have picked a worse mission. "Ain't only our buyer who's after that bauble. I gotta be sure he can handle this."

There's a long pause.

"If he don't," says Kraglin, in that slow voice that means he's dancing around a delicate subject and he knows it. "If he don't, uh, _handle this_. Do we… y'know?"

Yondu watches him dangerously. "Do we _y'know_ what?"

"Well…" Kraglin picks up an instrument. He glares at it like it's personally offended him, and busies himself with scrubbing imaginary smuts from the pitted crystal – although with the state of his leathers, he's probably putting on more dirt than he's rubbing off.

They all need a patch-up, after that last job. Patch up, haircut, nutrient-bath, the whole spa treatment. Usually Yondu'd scoff at the idea. Layer o'dirt means one more layer for the bullets to get through. But this time, his coat's feeling so lived-in that he's half-surprised it ain't demanding rent. (P'rhaps _that's_ why the boy's taking so long. Don't fancy openin' the airlock to a hefty waft of B.O.)

No, it ain't often Ravagers get to treat themselves. But if – _when_ – Peter pulls through, they'll certainly be able to afford it.

In the time it takes for his mind to swing off on that tangent and immerse itself in a bath of smoky green Kvargian mineral-mud, Kraglin's gathered his nerve. He replaces the glass and looks Yondu square in the eyes.

"D'we go after him?"

"Of course we do," Yondu says immediately. "Rules is rules, ain't they?" Kraglin's wise enough not to argue.

After that there's no more talking. No more noise at all, 'cept for the unanimous hitch in the crew's breaths when the engine spikes a fraction closer to meltdown, and even that's lost beneath the ever-present polyphony of beeps, clicks, and creaks that mean the ship ain't exploded (at least, not just yet). Yondu's been tuning those out for so long that he doesn't notice them anymore. Still, his ears keep straining – listening for the report from the scanners, a hail from the docking bay, that little sputtering blip on the holograph that reads _M-ship returning_.

Yondu moodily pulls Nova Prime's limbs into a starfish.

The _Milano_. What sorta stupid name's _'Milano'_ anyway?

Damn kid; he gives him an M-ship and he calls it after some Terran floozy. He gives him a mission – a _real_ mission, like Quill's been whingin' for, and what does he get in return? Well, he certainly _don't_ get a report. Not in seven whole turns of the universal chronometer (that hangs on the bridge's far wall like a bleak spherical hourglass, draining time in neon digits).

Should've let Horuz eat him years ago.

* * *

"I shoulda let Horuz rip his guts out the minute he set foot on my ship – the ungrateful _fucker_!"

Yondu's stomping through corridors with no destination in mind. His coat flaps around his calves with vicious leathery snaps, and his hands are curling indecisively between clenched fists and claws. He looks ready to strangle at the slightest provocation – or worse: whistle.

Ravagers scatter before him. If anyone's got the bollocks – or the lack of preservation instinct – to approach him, they deserve the arrow up the nose. But Kraglin, scurrying mutely a few paces behind, decides to thwart natural selection and adamantly shakes his head at those who look dumb enough to try it.

Best let the captain deal with this in his own way. And as his own way usually results in a pile of corpses waist-high and long tracts of hallway in need of redecorating, it's Kraglin's job to limit the collateral to off-ship.

"I'm gonna hunt him down and wring his neck like a wet fucking towel!"

There's shuffling from the next corridor over: the unmistakable sound of several Ravagers suddenly realising that they have somewhere else to be. By the time they turn the corner, it's deserted. After checking to make sure no one's following, Yondu grabs Kraglin's arm and shoves him against the wall. He pushes his face in until his crooked spit-flecked teeth are gnashing almost on Kraglin's lips, then he tightens his grip and gives his first mate one brutal bone-cracker of a shake. "He stole. From me. He stole from me! And if he thinks he can get away with it, he's a fuckin' _idiot_."

"Ain't nobody denying that, boss…" Kraglin squirms, wincing as he tries to readjust his weight. But Yondu's grip's a steel vice, hoisting him up by the biceps until his bootcaps just brush the ground. So instead he peers down. Studies that snarling face, which takes 'blue with fury' to a whole new level of literalness, and catches the tic that's threatening to make Yondu's mouth twitch.

Ah. So that's the game they're playing.

Kraglin relaxes into the bruising hold and affects a lazy, shark-toothed smile. "I dunno though. I thought it was kinda a decent plan. All things considered."

"It was, wasn't it?" says Yondu gleefully. "Heck, I never pegged _Quill_ for havin' the balls."

He releases Kraglin and steps away, shaking the tension from his back with a crackle of dry leather. Instantly, the rage is gone. The grin that replaces it is contagious. Kraglin waits until his captain's marched on, leading them further into the unpopulated tracts of the _Eclector_ 's shambled labyrinth, before releasing his breath and letting his legs support him once again. "I'm still puttin' a bounty on him," Yondu continues over his shoulder. As if Kraglin's expecting anything less. "Gotta keep him on his toes." Because knowing the boy, soon as he thinks he's home free he's gonna get cocky. And when he gets cocky, he gets _sloppy_. He'll be back on ship in no time.

"Dead or alive?" Kraglin asks. They pass through an unlit arch. Yondu thumps the doorframe to jolt the solar panels into half-hearted life; they reveal the dusty antechamber to one of their smaller storage holds. Don't look like anyone's been through in a while. Kraglin swipes a finger along the ridge of an empty crate and grimaces when it comes away grey.

"Either, I reckon. What d'you think for the price though – forty mil?" Kraglin attempts to rub the dust off on the wall and comes back with a handful of the stuff, which he proceeds to smear down the flank of his coat.

"Seems a bit much."

"He can pay me back with whatever he gets for that dumb orb."

Kraglin scratches his nose. He leaves a streak of grey war-paint.

"You're gonna let him handle sales?" Yondu shrugs.

"Might as well. We can always go pay the Xandarian geezer a visit afterwards; get some knickknacks, do some retrieval, that sorta thing. I heard his security ain't so tight – heck, if we don't collect it, someone will."

"And why let that jerkass Titan fetch his goods himself, when he can pay us for the service?" Kraglin completes. Yondu laughs, slaps him on the back. Dust erupts over the floor.

"What about after he's back though?" Yondu muses, while Kraglin recovers from his winding. "He's – uh – whassat thing he keeps quoting?" He snaps his fingers. "The one with the dancin' and the singin' an the Kevin Bacon –"

"Footloose," Kraglin supplies, still slightly breathless.

"Right." Yondu whirls, pacing from one end of the storeroom to the other. His coat billows behind him like a bloody comet trail. "He's _footloose_. Wantin' to strike out on his own, an' all – Ravager lifestyle ain't good enough no more, met a girl he remembers the name of in the morning, whatever. But ya know Quill; he'll roll over an' play nice when he's got my arrow at his neck. Then next night cycle he'll be off again, nickin' my ships and flying for Knowhere."

"It was your idea to teach him to fly, sir."

"Well, he wouldn't quit _naggin_ '…" Yondu shakes his head. "Anyway. I gotta be – y'know, consistent. Enforce discipline, that sorta thing." Because setting half the bounty hunters in this quadrant on him ain't dissuasion enough. (As soon as the thought's crossed his mind, Kraglin rethinks the sarcasm – because actually, knowing Quill, it isn't.) That still leaves the question though – what _are_ they gonna do with him?

The first mate leans against a stack of crates that's marginally less dusty than the rest of the room, and gnaws his nails in contemplation. It's a bad habit, especially considering that they're still sporting a generous coating of miscellaneous space-grime.

"We can't keep him on ship," he says. Yondu, still pacing, blinks at him bemusedly.

"Why not? Managed it for twenty years, didn't I?"

"Yeah but… He ain't a brat no more, y'know?" The captain scoffs. Kraglin relents. "Alright, so maybe he _is_ , but – it's different now. He's got his own ship –"

" _My_ ship," Yondu reminds him. "S'just on loan."

"Yeah, yeah – he's got _a_ ship, he's got itchy feet, he's got a whole Galaxy to explore… Even if you chuck him in the brig, he ain't gonna be around long enough to chew through one o'Shorro's Specials."

Which, given the gruel-like consistency of most dishes that shoot out from under the mess hall hatch, 'special' or otherwise, is quite the feat. It's true though. That's the fallback of teaching the boy everything you know – pickin' locks is first trick on the list. Pondering the point, Yondu stalks over in a whirl of dust and red leather and leans beside him, glaring holes into the floor grills. His shoulder rubs Kraglin's arm.

"I can't just let him _waltz off_." A phrase more literal in Peter's case than most others. "Crew won't like it."

"Crew can go fuck themselves," says Kraglin. Then slants his eyes sideways to check how that's received. "Uh. I mean. Your choice. With all due respect, captain." Yondu's poker face is impeccable when he wants it to be, but he still lets the silence build just long enough to be uncomfortable before he speaks again.

"Nah. Can't go choosing favourites. I gotta punish him somehow, or I'll never hear the end of it."

 _If you don't choose favourites, what does that make me?_ But that just sounds petulant. And needy, and whingey, and all those other things that'll either make Yondu clamp up and change the subject, or grin like he's just cracked open an unstamped crate of Zlarvan whiskey and tease him until they're both as old as Nova fucking Prime. Kraglin doesn't know which would be worse. So he keeps his mouth shut, and banishes the words from his mind.

"Put him on bog duty for a coupla weeks," he suggests. "Ain't no one who wants to go through that twice." Yondu rubs a contemplative finger through the bristles on his chin – but shakes his head.

"Too _simple_. He's expectin' bog duty. Mentally preparin' himself for it, y'know?" For all the good that'll do him, if he leaves it til after Horuz's done his morning shit. "Nah, I gotta think up somethin' new."

"If you say so, sir." They stand in silence a while. Kraglin's eyes flit around the storeroom in unspoken boredom, never alighting on the same crate twice, while Yondu's bore pensively through the dense wires of the floor grills and off into the middle distance. Then Kraglin's gaze lands on the crate he'd first brushed over. His palm's left a streak of clean wood showing through the uniform grey. "Hey – how many old storage rooms we got like this?"

Yondu rattles the answer off the top of his head – it's been a while since he looked over storage and supplies, but a captain's gotta know his ship, and even if he's a few digits out he can estimate with enough confidence that any surplus can be waved off as newly emptied. "Seventeen. 'Bout thirty if you count the antechambers."

"Hm." Kraglin shuffles an inch closer. "And how long d'you reckon it'd take to clean 'em all?"

Yondu looks down at the thigh that's suddenly nudging his. Then up at Kraglin's face. Having Peter break out the feather dusters ain't gonna be enough – boy'll flap at the cobwebs, flick at the cargo bays and sweep the majority under the metaphorical rug. But his first mate's got that tightness to his mouth that suggests he's trying to hide a grin. "…What're you thinkin'?"

"Well sir, thirty rooms is a fair few," Kraglin says. "If we wanna be done by the time Quill gets back, we'd best get with makin' 'em messy." And he squeezes Yondu's cock where it's lying flaccid inside his pant leg. The grin's fully-fledged now, and one of that particular sharp-edged variety that means either immanent death or immanent fucking. Yondu returns it.

* * *

Yondu grabs Kraglin by his filthy lapels and spins him, first around in front, then again to crash against the crates. Dust cascades over their heads. Neither notice. By then, Yondu's got two handfuls of Kraglin's ass to squeeze and affectionately pinch, and Kraglin's equally distracted chasing that blue bottom lip, trying to bite his captain into a kiss. Yondu doesn't say anything, but he turns his head. Kraglin's teeth snap a centimetre from his cheek. The first mate takes the rejection in his stride though, revenging himself by latching onto the Yondu's ear.

" _Ow,_ fuck…" Kraglin smiles to himself and unlatches his teeth to gently suckle the lobe. When he rubs his thumbs in firm circles against the seam where the implant joins Yondu's skull, tough blue skin shifting over solid bone, he's rewarded by a gasp of air and Yondu's fingers clutching at his ass like it's a double-handed stress ball.

However, the pleasure doesn't last. Yondu releases his hold (which Kraglin dislikes), relocates it onto Kraglin's temples (which Kraglin likes even less), and hoists his head back far enough that the first mate can meet his fierce red stare. "Mind the teeth," Yondu growls. This time there's no telling tic. Kraglin watches a second, just in case, but then deems it safest to demurely lower his gaze and go back to massaging the glossy crimson wedge that's driven chisel-like through the centre of Yondu's skull.

"Sorry, sir."

"Hmph." They return to their touches in silence. Yondu seems to be making up for his lacking words with sheer aggressiveness; at this rate, Kraglin's going to walk out of the thirtieth hold and get shot when someone mistakes him for a stowaway Kree. He don't complain though. First mate takes what the captain gives. S'practically his job description.

Still, it can't help but smart – and not just physically, when Yondu grabs his shoulders and roughly manhandles him round face-first against the grubby wooden slats. Kraglin hisses without quite meaning to – his arm's twisted between him and the crates, that's all; ain't nothing he can't handle – but Yondu either doesn't hear or doesn't care, because he continues his assault just as roughly as ever. Hey, it don't matter. What's a dislocated shoulder between friends?

Fuck-buddies. Bed mates. Whatever the hell they are.

Kraglin wriggles around until he can free his arm and brace himself, and then he pushes back, sealing their bodies together. He ain't no wilting flower. Captain wants to be rough, Kraglin'll take it rough – and give it back just as hard. (Well. Maybe not _quite_ as hard – Centaurians are a bloody tough lot to hurt. He should know. He's seen it tried often enough.)

But still… There's a little nugget of his brain, one of those traitorous parts that he keeps quashed down close to the quick and personal, that's whisperin' away right now: how _nice_ it'd be, to be able to kiss someone like he used to with the street-girls on Hrax, how much he'd give to do more than just squeeze Yondu's ass on the sly when he sidles past on the Bridge.

And not necessarily _sexy_ stuff either (although he wouldn't be adverse to that). Just… _stuff_. Nothing too mushy. No need for flowers an' chocolate, not when the floors're sorta horizontal and the whiskey's strong enough to put hairs on their chests – well, on Kraglin's anyway, and plenty of it; which he's been kinda embarrassed about in the past but can't bring himself to be when Yondu scrapes his dirty nails through it and smiles at the greasy dark curls. Like he is now.

Kraglin drops his head and focusses on the blue fingers as they stroke and pinch, fondling his scrawny chest and carding through the wiry hair. His shirt's pushed up to his armpits, and Yondu has to reach around the thick folded leather of his overcoat.

Course, he's just bein' dumb. Dumb and sentimental. Yondu'd laugh his ass off if he knew.

S'why Kraglin don't tell him.

But either Yondu's more pissed at Quill than he let on, or this is some kinda punishment for trying to steal a kiss when he knows from past experience – past experience spent at the unfriendly end of a yaka arrow – that Yondu don't like them. Or maybe he's just being extra-efficient. Thirty rooms to get round, an all. But whatever the cause, the captain doesn't bother with undressing: just flips Kraglin's coat up over his back and yanks his pants down to his knees. Stepping closer to the crates on shaking legs – shut up, it's _cold_ – Kraglin just about manages to get his balance before Yondu kicks his feet apart and deigns to bare his own erection to the goosepimpling air.

"Somebody's eager, sir," he jokes, as those fingers dip down to his crotch to check on progress, weighing and squeezing, then slip round to the back. Yondu huffs out a laugh against his shoulderblade, but doesn't reply.

Perhaps there ain't no explanation needed. Captain just _gets_ like this sometimes. They all do, really – but Yondu's got the power and the position to do some serious damage, if he wanted. Better a few bruises on Kraglin than a bloody swathe carved through the crew. (Not that Yondu'd ever do that, whatever his threats: desperate men ain't _that_ easy to come by, and heck, they wouldn't get half the recruits if Yondu had a reputation for goin' on a rampage every time he got in a mood. But still, it don't do to tempt fate. A happy captain's a happy ship.)

And so he's half-expecting pain, when he feels the blunt tip of an index pressing against his ass. The flinch is entirely accidental though. Complete fluke. Hopefully too small for Yondu to notice – Kraglin freezes immediately afterwards, praying... But Yondu's obliviousness is, as usual, entirely selective and only operates when Kraglin doesn't want it to.

The hand hesitates.

Then is removed entirely, only to return – Kraglin lets out a breath of relief – to his front with five slow, firm and very welcome pumps.

"Relax, will ya?" whispers Yondu in Kraglin's ear. His voice is all husk and gravel; Kraglin shivers in a way that ain't got nothing to do with the cold when he feels the tentative press of lips against his pulsepoint. "Ain't gonna make it hurt. Not unless you want me to." Kraglin isn't expecting to feel so grateful. But just hearing Yondu's voice is enough to make the tension, tension he hadn't even noticed gather, start to unravel from his shoulders. What do you say to something like that?

 _Thank you? Same goes on your end?_

Kraglin settles for – "Uh, you, uh, got any lube, then?" Yondu cackles and rolls his balls roughly from palm to palm.

"Anything for you, darlin'," he says, giving Kraglin's throat another of those tight-lipped pecks that (for some unfathomable reason) makes Kraglin's pulse race. The adrenaline remains, pouring heat through his veins and wringing a desperate gasp from him when the first two slicked-up fingers slide in. But even as Yondu stretches him with confident thrusts, Kraglin can't quite focus. He's too busy turning his captain's words over in his mind. _Anything for you, darlin'_. Because – well, he ain't no expert on deciphering Yondu's brand of humour. The scholars of Xandar could pour over it for years and come up blank, he reckons. But for once, it didn't sound like he was joking.

"Ready?" Yondu asks, what feels like hours later. His fingers pause, but remain deeply seated. They're a cool foreign presence, inducing neither pleasure nor pain but simply _there_ and keenly so: the acute focus of Kraglin's being. The daze that's been settling over him clears. He peers back over his shoulder, jaw slack, to meet heavy-lidded crimson eyes.

 _Anything for you._

"Ready," he manages. Shuts his eyes, rests his forehead between his braced forearms, and eases his thighs further apart. The fabric crotch of his pants stretches between his bony knees.

"Alright." Another close-mouthed kiss, this applied with surgical precision to the top knot on Kraglin's spine. "Relaxed, yeah?"

"As I'll ever be."

"Hey." Yondu extracts his fingers, slow enough that Kraglin don't wince at the sudden draft back there, and strokes them down his inner thighs. "You… you tell me. If you don't like it…"

Kraglin scoffs into his armpit.

"You gonna wrap me in bubble-wrap or fuck me, sir?"

He doesn't regret the words one bit. Not even when Yondu – very, very abruptly – stops petting the fur on his legs and fills the space left by his fingers with his cock.

Looks like fuck it is. Kraglin's features soften into a blissed-out grin, the edges of which jerk when Yondu strikes a particularly hard thrust home. The captain tangles his fingers in the snarls of Kraglin's Mohawk and tugs, guiding his head until his spine's arched and his throat's bared in a long, sinewy column.

"If I was Horuz, I think I'd wanna take a bite outta you right about now," Yondu says into his skin. Kraglin almost chokes on a laugh.

"No offence, sir, but leave the dirty-talkin' to me." Warmth pours through him when he feels Yondu laugh, jagged teeth scraping lines. His thrusts even out. They're still rough, but deep enough to scrape over Kraglin's innards in a way that makes his ears flush like red rosettes and his feet flex in their boots. The steady slam of their weight shakes the stacked crates, dust spilling around them in prickly clouds, but it don't matter because everything's already fuzzy and dazing in that way it gets when Yondu's fucking him like he means it.

Still, dust brings with it other problems –

"Fuck," Kraglin gasps. "Gonna – gonna sneeze –"

That's all the warning Yondu gets before his first mate rears back, almost smacking him in the nose with his crown, and then rocks violently forwards with a resounding "Aaaaah- _tchoo!_ " His body clenches from eyes to toes. Apparently assholes ain't exempt – the warm silky muscle clamps tight around him, and Yondu's eyes almost roll back. Sheepishly, Kraglin pushes himself up off the crates and peers over his shoulder.

"Sorry, captain." Yondu don't seem to mind though. In fact, if the way he growls and grabs Kraglin by the nape is any indication, bending his torso forwards so he can drive in at a steeper angle while his nails pinch bloody crescent moons into the tattooed skin, he's lookin' to bring enough dust down on them to make Kraglin sneeze again. Kraglin himself, elbows locked as tight as they can and still being forced forwards like he's being shunted by a steam train, is immensely grateful for the strong arm wrapped around his waist. He's not sure he'd still be on his feet without it.

So all in all, life's going pretty fucking well.

Even if Peter's scarpered with the biggest piece o'booty they'll ever have the misfortune of being hired to retrieve, well, Kraglin can't think of nowhere else he'd rather be.

He's here. Yondu's here. They've got twenty nine storerooms to christen before their runaway's dragged back in, and for a moment back there, Kraglin had almost been convinced that _Yondu cared_.

Then the commlink sputters into life. It's followed (unfortunately) by Jax's voice, made all the raspier by the static hiss.

"Uh, captain, wherever you are… Zqo's got a trace on the _Milano_ 's beacon. Looks like Peter didn't disable it right, or something, I dunno…"

Yondu immediately halts his movements – to which Kraglin lets out an aggravated groan – and holds up a hand to shush him. There's another burst of static. But Kraglin's prayers are once again left unanswered, because the comm gushes back to life mid-sentence. "…Headin' to Xandar. Must be tryin' ta make the pitch." Squeezing warningly at the back of Kraglin's neck, just in case he's tempted to make a noise (which, okay, he is) Yondu reaches behind his ear and activates his link to the internal comms-system. He directs the transmission towards the bridge rather than out across the whole ship, and rests his other palm on Kraglin's flushed back.

"How soon can we get there?"

"Not soon enough, unless Peter ain't as good a salesman as he's always braggin'."

Yondu snorts. Kraglin, who's never before felt _ignored_ while there's a cock up his ass, rests his head on the crates and sulkily pushes rearwards. But the captain just transfers the hand on his neck to join the one on his hips, holding him stationary with embarrassing ease as he pulls out and tucks himself back into his trousers. "

Hey!"

Yondu flaps a hand at him to shut up. Apparently, talkin' job's more _appealing_ than finishing their business.

"Soon enough to do some retrieval though, right?"

Well, _somebody_ can finish their own fuckin' business on their lonesome.

"If we get a move on."

Not like Kraglin cares anyway. He can hook a girl any time he likes. Someone who don't feel the need to glare him down every time he gets uppity. And, oh, he doesn't know, actually _kisses back._

"Right. Set course, you know the drill. I'll be up in five."

Kraglin waits until the comm link's cut. He'd like to shove Yondu off him. The captain's already stepped away though, so he makes do with grumpily hiking his trousers up to the waist, and buckles them in white-knuckled silence. Yondu, foot on the threshold, pauses like he's just remembered his presence; but by then Kraglin's too busy looking anywhere else but him to notice the guilt that flits across his face, there-and-gone, bottled up faster than Horuz can down shots when he's looking to impress the ladies. (Being the only skill other than shooting things and threatening Terran brats that the Ravager's ever bothered to cultivate, that's pretty damn fast.)

But hell. After _that_ interruption, Kraglin ain't in a forgiving mood, so he wouldn't give a shit anyway.

Yondu looks to the empty corridor. Then back at Kraglin, who is fiercely smoothing the dust off of his coat.

"Uh – you comin'?"

"That an order?" Kraglin asks. Yondu effects an uncaring shrug.

"Nah."

"Then no." He pushes the flap of his coat down and turns away to unroll his shirt from where it's gathered halfway up his chest. There's silence behind him, and he half-thinks Yondu's gone – but then there's a creak of shifting leather and the huff of a pent up breath.

"Hey," Yondu says. Takes a step closer. Thinks better of it. "We'll pick up where we left off, yeah? Soon as I'm done up top."

Kraglin shoots him as icy a glare as he dares. "That an order either, sir?"

He goes back to straightening his collar. Next time he looks, he's alone.

* * *

 **Hey everyone! Please drop me some love in the reviews if you're enjoying this fic. Hope the slight angst isn't too upsetting - I had to fit it in there somewhere. Cannot resist torturing my favourite characters, amirite? xxx**


	5. Best Served Cold

**Oh no, an OC! Fret not: she won't feature heavily after this chapter, and there won't be any romance. Which is a shame, because I've somehow started to like her.**

* * *

Her name is Alzaq Kwaa Zqo.

She's been running with the Ravagers since that job turned sour on the edge of Skrullspace; the one where her glossy-badged, slick-spackled uptight Nova commander had decided that that _one_ little incident where she _might_ have pushed a civilian into a combusting engine for saying something unrepeatable about her mother – or _might not have_ , but nobody paid any attention to the whole 'innocent until proven guilty' thing because _apparently_ people didn't slip and fall when they were wearing magnetic safety boots – made her the equivalent of ejectable ballast when they were being pursued through the atmosphere of a murky smuggler planet and needed to shed weight.

But she'd survived. Against all odds, she'd survived the fall. Against even greater odds, she'd survived the planet. And she'd gone on surviving.

A Ravager's life had warmed to Zqo like a well-paid prostitute. She's been clawing her way up the ranks of galactic scum ever since. Heck, she can practically boast that she's on first name basis with the captain! (Sure, he calls her 'girl' a lot, or 'lad' when he's not concentrating, but really, he does that to everybody.)

And after all that, after everything she's been through… She's going to die. Here. Freezing her ass off on some backwater moon. At the very least, she's looking at losing three toes and two fingers. Possibly a nose. All because of the captain and his blasted pet Terran.

His blasted pet Terran.

Who is also known as the Guardians of the Galaxy's unofficial ringleader. And Star Lord (although from what she's heard, that's mostly from himself). And 'the biggest womanizer this side of Quatroplex', 'that music-addicted a-hole who keeps challenging people to dance offs', and Peter Quill.

The name strikes fear into the heart of any Ravager.

This is not so much in awe of the man himself – who is, in Zqo's expert opinion, a disappointingly unremarkable specimen; mistakable for basic Xandarian stock but for the bulky Terran music box he wears clipped to his belt. He doesn't have additional limbs, bioluminescent markings or even cybernetic implants beyond that tasteless ghoul-eyed mask. Altogether, hardly an image to cower before.

Rather, Peter Quill is a name to beware because of its carry on. Vengeful would-be conquerors, cataclysmic disasters and destructive artefacts of a mysterious nature swarm en masse to his presence, and anyone who passes within pissing distance is liable to get caught in the fallout. His current companions aren't much better. There's the best assassin in the galaxy, a small furry creature with a temper problem, a maniac who (Zqo is willing to bet) sleeps with his knives, and… a mobile tree?

Which happens to be wading through the fluorescent yellow snow drift two feet to her right.

The blizzard's so bad she can hardly see him, let alone the Ravager in front. For a long time there was just her and the strain of the rope lashed round her belly, the other ends of which vanish into the storm in front and behind. Zqo had been staggering, her boots crunching and scraping through the packed snow. She was wondering how much longer she could go on before she fell and her crewmates cut her loose.

No liabilities among the Ravagers. You carried your own weight, or you died.

And then the tree had arrived. And Zqo had decided that if someone – something? – the size of a Xandarian preschooler could vanquish this storm, so could she.

The tree doesn't seem bothered by the cold. She envies him that. Saffron icicles jangle from his twigs, and he has to give his head the occasional shake to clear them from his vision. But he does it without complaint, and he always makes sure she's well out of harm's way before he starts peppering the air with his icy javelins. Even more surprisingly, he's moving through the blasting gale with relative ease, despite not having – as far as Zqo can see, which admittedly is not very – a guiding rope.

Zqo places one foot determinedly in front of the other. They sink into the knee. She has to hoist them almost to her chest before she can take the next step. But the exhaustion and pain have long since faded. She lost feeling in her legs at around the same time Peter pointed to some invisible nook on the horizon and announced that shelter was nearby. Now all she feels is numbness and the need to introduce Quill to the next combustible engine they find – as soon as she's finished thawing her fingers over it.

The tree is capable of overtaking her, but he – Xir? It? – seems content to wade along at the back of the group, keeping time with the Ravagers nobody much will miss. Zqo is grateful for that. Not that she'd ever admit it. Somehow, she feels far less likely to take a misstep and topple both self and all others attached to the tow-rope into a bottomless ravine when the little tree is loping merrily at her side.

When he lifts his feet, she sees roots worming their way back into his gnarly, bark-like hide, before shooting out to lash his next step tight to the frozen earth.

"We can do this," she says to herself, through gritted teeth. And then louder, to the little tree. "We can do this. We can do this, right?"

A shout from ahead. It's blown back into her face and whipped away immediately by the force of the wind. But even without hearing the words Zqo gets the message, and she almost sinks to her knees with relief.

But she can't stop now. She can't give up here. Only a few more steps – only a few more steps, and she can strip her sodden leathers and count her remaining toes and plot how to murder one very irritating Terran. She doesn't look at the tree as she picks up her pace, lowering her head and ploughing doggedly onwards towards sanctuary.

* * *

Sanctuary is hardly five-star accommodation.

At this moment though, Yondu'd take a damn Jthuoan sewerpipe over the storm – and given that the Jthuo diet consists of rancid meat with the occasional sprinkle of dried formaldehyde for flavouring, that's saying something.

His first instinct, when he staggers through the cave's entrance, is to assess his surroundings. He scopes dark corners for beasts or burrows, and sweeps the stratified underside of the glacier for the man-eating tiger-bats that are said to camouflage themselves against the marigold ice and drop down on their prey from above.

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees two of Quill's companions – the green chick and the bulky guy – doing the same. Quill himself is too busy changing his track to care about the abattoir they might have stumbled into. His teeth are chattering louder than the music. Meanwhile, his pet rodent is berating a sulky-looking tree – something about untying himself from his line so that he could go play with his new friends – "No, they ain't yer friends, they're _Ravagers_ and they prob'bly wanna eat ya, or burn ya for firewood or sumthin'; and honestly, can't I take my eyes off ya for _one second_?"

"…I am Groot?"

" _And don't give me that!_ "

There's something ridiculously _domestic_ about it; so much so that Yondu's tempted to laugh. Seems like Quill's stuck raising a kid of his own.

But for now, there's more important things to do than mock the boy. (Or wreak vengeance for a certain troll doll. Although that's on the to-do list.)

The last group of Ravagers straggle through the cave opening, and, after a quick headcount that reveals they haven't lost anyone important, Yondu heads over to Kraglin. His first mate is crouched on the cave floor, a bundle of stick-thin limbs and sodden leather. He's unrolling thermal blanket after thermal blanket with a worrying crease between his brows.

"There ain't enough for all of us," is the first thing he says, when he catches Yondu's shadow hovering over the cluttered campsite. "What're we going to do for food once this lot runs out? Eat ice?"

Peter looks aghast. "Didn't your mom ever tell you not to eat the yellow snow?"

What few supplies they salvaged from the wreck are lying around him. Yondu surveys them dispassionately. Kraglin's exaggerating: there's enough nourishment for three days, so long as no one goes on a binge. Longer, if the Guardians get over their qualms about eating anyone who dies. Plenty of time to wait out the storm.

Add to that tally four fully stocked medkits and a couple more that look like they've been rummaged through, and they're set. Then there's the thermal blankets, row after row of squishy compressed liquid-packs, and a sack of miscellaneous bits to trade for spare parts if – _when_ – they reach civilisation. Fifteen exothermaspheres – they're gonna have to ration them too, squeeze as many people as they can in close and rotate the group on a bi-hourly basis to distribute the warmth as evenly as possible. And even then they'll be relying more on each other's body heat than the glowing little globe. Maybe it's fortunate that they'll be sharing blankets.

All in all: prospects not great. But they've survived worse.

Or maybe that's just his pride talking, seeing as technically this is all his fault.

Once Kraglin's pulled the last blanket out of his pack, Peter bounces into the middle of the cavern and claps his hands for attention. Yellow meltwater runs from his hair.

"Alright, folks! Everyone choose your snuggle buddy!"

The other Guardians take a collective step towards each other. They needn't worry. From the sour looks on the Ravagers' faces, they're not too keen on getting cosy.

The demented expression slides from Peter's face. "Oh come _on_. Like it or not, we're going to have to work together to get out of this one."

Yondu's tempted to sit back and watch Peter play camp leader. But the boy's got a point. The necessity of surviving the night overtakes any amusement he'd eke from watching the boy make a fool of himself.

"We haven't got a choice," Peter is saying. "Look, I'm sorry – we don't like you much either." He's aligning himself with the Guardians. Of course. "But for one night – just for one night! – we've gotta suck it up. Now it's all very well you glaring at me like I'm dirt off your boots (although I'd like to state, for the record, that it wasn't _me_ who crashed your ship into mine)…"

Nope, that had all been Yondu.

"But hey. I can let go of grudges. And so can you. Let's let bygones be bygones and stolen infinity gems be stolen infinity gems." Not likely. The Ravagers are looking uncooperative, in a surly sort of way. This isn't working fast enough for Yondu's liking. If he doesn't hurry things up, they're all going to be of a shade with him – which, in his opinion, would do most of 'em wonders, but blue flesh loses its appeal when it's the result of severe hypothermia. "So I'll say it again. We have to work together! And when I say _work together_ , I mean –"

Yondu barges Peter unceremoniously to one side.

"Alright, lads!" he booms. "Pick your partner, grab a sack, set up on the starboard side as close as ya can get without pokin' yer toes in someone's eye. And do it quicklike – I don't know about you, but I'm _fuckin' freezing_." The Ravagers hasten to obey.

"- Sleep in a massive puppy-pile," finishes Quill lamely. He tosses a blanket at Horuz when the bulky alien makes to steal his, then grudgingly gives Yondu a nod. "Alright. So that worked. No big deal. You're just better at projecting your voice."

"Sure, boy. Whatever you say."

Later, when they've finally sorted partners and are drawing lots for who gets to spend the first hour close to the sphere rather than freezing their asscheeks together – a process which involves lots of bickering and the acquisition of several non-fatal wounds – the green chick turns to Yondu and says what's been weighing on all of their minds since ship met ship and they all went spiralling down.

"How do I know you're not going to murder Quill the moment we shut our eyes?" she demands. "Or the rest of us, for that matter?"

The yaka arrow is tucked away in its usual spot; Yondu pats it fondly as he answers."You sayin' you don't take me on my word, girl? Why, I'm offended; it's like ya don't know me at all!"

"It's like she knows you perfectly," says Peter dryly. He has, by voicing the suggestion that species of similar body heats should stick together to optimise the mutual effects of their homeostasis, managed to secure Gamora as a sack-buddy. The big fella's due to sleep with the furry critter (as well as his two massive kukri, three plasma-pistols, and the grenade-launcher that the animal insisted on toting this whole way despite it being bigger than he is. Really, when you think about it, they're perfect for each other.) Surprisingly, the juvenile Flora Colossus specimen's picked out one of his lasses to cuddle up to, without much fuss from either side – Yondu squints at her in short-lived interest. What was her name again? Zoey? Zawa?

That leaves the Ravagers to sort themselves into pairs based on heat compatibility, and Kraglin and Yondu.

("You should probably find someone a bit warmer," Yondu says. Kraglin snorts like he's made a bad joke and continues preparing the patch they've been allocated, midway between the sphere and the hoar-encrusted walls. And really, that's all there is to say on the matter.)

Yondu shrugs.

"Alright then, boy. You wanna take charge, take it. What can I do that'll make you and your girlfriend sleep easy?"

"She's not my girlfriend," says Quill far too quickly.

The green chick brazenly narrows her eyes and suggests that they might get some decent shut-eye if he and Kraglin relocate their camp to the cave's exterior, to which furry-and irritating cackles, and their maniacal knife-toter looks confused. It's a disturbing expression, when you're used to seeing that face in the throes of murderous rampage.

"But Peter said we must work together. If they expose themselves to the elements, they will die."

"That," says green-skin acidly, "is the point." Yondu can't help but grin. She's got guts. And no matter Peter's bluster; she's _definitely_ his girlfriend; although what a gal like her is doing with that gormless goofball of a Terran, he can't fathom…

P'raps he should show her that vidclip of that time he made Peter hold hands with Horuz for an entire night cycle. Something tells him she'd enjoy it.

"Ain't nobody exposin' nothing," he states firmly. "Now, how about this – we make up our camp over here in _this_ little corner, and you make up yours over _there_ , as far away as you can get. That way if we do try anythin', you'll hear us coming, if only cause anyone not too numb to feel it'll holler when they feel us stompin' on their backs."

"Okay," says Peter, and sets off.

"No," says Gamora. She hooks him by the collar.

"No?" Peter enquires once he's stopped choking.

"No." Then, in explanation: "he's got a yaka arrow."

"Which you'll hear coming," Yondu reminds her. "Don't fret your pretty head - I'll even whistle the boy's damn _Pina Colada_ song so you'll know it's me."

"That," Gamora tells him, "is not making me feel any better." But the cold is seeping through them, harsh and insidious. Most of the Ravagers have already tucked themselves in. Their bodies are swaddled in the shimmering thermal fabric like pupae in glass-spun cocoons. Most duos have arranged themselves back to back, but several around the fringes of the group have opted for the marginally warmer option of tucking one's spine against the other's stomach; Yondu's surprised to see Horuz among their number, but he figures even macho space pirate pride's gotta come subordinate to survival.

Outside, the blizzard rages on. Gusts shriek through the cave's narrow entrance, relentlessly slicing what little warmth they've generated to slivers like volleys of frozen blades.

They're going to have to wrap up too, if they want to survive the night. And soon.

As if hearing his thoughts, Peter's shivers crank up a notch. When he rubs his arms, the ice gathered in the creases of his trenchcoat tinkles to the floor – the chimes are eerily melodic, not unlike the resonance of Yondu's whistles half-heard through a fat pane of space-sturdy blastglass.

"C'mon, Gamora," the Terran wheedles. "If you're that desperate to keep an eye on him, I guess we can pitch our bag next to theirs. Just… let's get in it, soon? Please?"

All this through chattering teeth. Boy's milking his fragile Terran biology for all it's worth – Yondu, who's watched him absorb _dark fucking energy_ from a fucking _infinity gem_ without being turned into a Quill-shaped scorch mark, ain't sold. But surprisingly, Gamora is. Her gaze softens, just slightly; a chip of comet ice come hurtling out of deepspace that's struck home on Quill and just begun to thaw.

 _Definitely_ his girlfriend.

"Very well," Gamora concedes. Even manages to sound haughty about it. She wrenches her gaze from Yondu's so that she can attend to her charge, but not before making that odd Terran gesture – the one Peter had abused in his teenage years, and which several Ravagers (and now, apparently, Guardians) have picked up – of jabbing index and middle towards her eyes and then swivelling them to menace Yondu's own. "I warn you, Centaurian. I will be watching. And if you so much as _dream_ of hurting him, and I will make you wish you had never left your father's pouch."

Then she stalks off. Yondu takes the opportunity to share an eye roll with Kraglin.

"She's his girlfriend."

"She's dumber than she looks, then," Kraglin agrees. They ignore Peter's cry of "Oi, I heard that!"

The first mate slits the thermal sack down the middle. Fabric tears like wet tissue, fronds lifting and waving in the draft. Their thermal blanket is made of insulating silvery panels, each smaller than the head of a pin; glistening on the outside and dull on the in. Kraglin kicks off his sodden boots and levers himself into the hole he's created. A quick brush of the fringes, holding them together until the fibres interweave, and the process is complete. Minus one thing – his captain. Yondu kicks where he judges a shin to be.

"You forgot what 'sharing' means, lad?" Yawning, Kraglin pulls the blanket to his chin and wraps skinny arms around himself, pinching warmth back into the flesh.

"Ain't my fault you're getting slow in your old age, sir." He gets another kick for that. "Ow!"

"If you can feel it, you ain't got nothing to complain about. Now budge over before I turn into a fucking ice cube."

"I dunno, sir," Kraglin says. "You'd make a nice ice sculpture. We could sell ya to the Collector next time we pass Knowhere; make you his hatstand or somethin'."

"I like that idea," the furry abomination calls. He's wrapped up in the big guy's arms, only a tuft of fur poking from the top of the blanket to show that he hasn't been smothered under all that scarred and painted bulk. Shame. "Anyone else like that idea?"

"Me," mutters Gamora. From the sounds of the brief scuffle that follow, Peter either tried to swat her in chastisement or got a bit too handsy. Yondu really can't bring himself to care. Right now he's freezing, he's exhausted, and he's sick of his crew griping that this he's to blame for this mess when they think he can't hear them.

And on that note, Kraglin'd better not think he can get away with the stage-whisper he'd made to Quill when they'd first grudgingly banded together, that the boy was right and Yondu really _should_ let someone else fly. Because goddamit, even if it is currently half-buried in snow at the bottom of a garish crevasse that someone with the Collector's fashion sense might describe as _chartreuse_ , with its main thrusters and life support out and not a decent port in sight, it's _his ship_ and it's _not happening_ …

His toes feel like they've fused to the inside of his boots. Yondu almost expects them to come off when he yanks the saturated leather down, and clumsily props them next to Kraglin's. No doubt they'll have frozen solid come morning, but they can deal with that then.

"Move over," he grunts.

Kraglin does so, wordlessly shuffling to the far side of the cocoon and burying his face in the soft mesh. Feeling slightly self-conscious, Yondu inhales deeply in preparation. Then in a single motion, strips off his frost-heavy Ravager's coat and burrows into the blankets at Kraglin's side. A quick wriggle and he's down to his underwear, the ice-encrusted layers of shirts and jackets and pants kicked down to the bottom of the sack to thaw and leak their meltwater out through the porous membrane. Kraglin's back is centimetres from his chest. The knobbles of his spine send long shadows stretching over the pallid skin.

Yondu closes the distance. Feels him tense.

Kraglin's clammy and almost burning after Yondu's extended stint in the frigid air. But heat leaches quickly, and the first mate pulls his knees to his chest, tucking his chin in with a muffled gasp. Idiot really should have cozied up to someone of his temperature.

One of the Xandarians, perhaps.

Quill.

Horuz.

Yondu briefly meditates on those images. Then decides that this is the better option after all.

Still, he retreats an inch or two. Not enough to leave his first mate's heat bubble – Yondu ain't _that_ selfless, and anyway, if the lad's species wants to give off warmth like a cuddle-sized exothermasphere, far be it from him to dismiss their biological generosity. But enough to let Kraglin conserve a little more heat for himself, before he steals it all away.

"First shift starts now," he calls to the Ravagers, voice gruff. "Timer's set to go off in two hours. Try and catch what shut-eye you can – we'll have a switch about, and some unlucky sod'll need to head outside to gauge how much longer we'll be sharin' quarters." He's met with several grumbling 'yessirs', a loud 'shut up, will ya? I'm trying to sleep!' from Quill's furry friend (followed by a drawn out 'I am Grooooot').

That's enough. He's said his bit. And he certainly ain't in the mood to fight Quill's pet – as satisfying as it would be to wrap his hands around that furry, infuriating little throat and _squeeze_ …

Yondu shakes his head and pulls the flap of the porous blanket up and over, enclosing himself and Kraglin in a shell of fragile silver threads and burgeoning bodyheat. Whether or not his men survive the night, that's on them, and he doesn't much care about the Guardians either which way. But for now, he can follow his own advice.

Or he would. If Kraglin didn't have other ideas in mind.

* * *

"Hey," comes his first mate's whisper. "Boss?" His voice is scratchy, loud against the soundscape of their slowing breaths. "You can come in a bit closer, if ya want. I ain't _that_ mad at you for crashing." Yondu, who's got his fingers in his armpits and his toes tucked as close to his groin as they can get, gratefully takes him up on the offer. He's just relaxing into the familiar smells of sweat and leather, vodka and space-dirt and cheap hair grease, when Kraglin speaks again. "So. You. Me. Relative privacy."

"Very relative," Yondu reminds him. He doesn't bother opening his eyes – little light can enter the pod when its shut, and right now he wants to focus on the sheer _presence_ of Kraglin; the firm muscles of his legs as they curl back and tangle with his, the sharp knobbles of his elbows as they dig between his ribs. All in all, the bone-deep contentment he's feeling right now _could_ very easily become something else – if it weren't for the sacks pressing in from all sides. Peter and Gamora in particular are so close that Yondu can feel the distinct impression of a knee.

As if on cue, it shifts and digs into his liver. He's tempted to whistle his arrow through the sacks' pliable skins and skewer the both of them, but that'll just result in people shouting at him and right now all he wants to do is sleep.

Nope, Kraglin's gotta be joking. His side's probably equally crowded, if not more so (being a fraction closer to the pulsing exothermasphere). Honestly right now Yondu's just glad that the sacks' insulation doubles as partial sound-proofing – Peter'd never let him forget it if he thought they were even _considerin'_ getting off when they're supposed to be stavin' off death-by-frostbite.

With that in mind, Yondu snuffles his nose into the dip behind Kraglin's collarbones and settles down to sleep.

His first mate sighs in apparent defeat. Yondu lets himself relax further, joints softening and fingers curling through the gnarls of hair that liberally coat Kraglin's stomach. In return, Kraglin grabs his hand and tugs it round further so they're clasped in a loose hug. Yondu, thinking nothing of it, returns the action. Then Kraglin starts dragging that same hand down. And down. Yondu lets out an amused huff and says sleepily into Kraglin's ear –

"What d'you think you're doing, lad?"

"Warming up," Kraglin replies. Shuffles his lower body back until the hairy backs of his thighs are tickling the fronts of Yondu's, and then – daringly – closer still.

"I don't think this comes under _conservin' our energy._ " But he gives the flaccid cock a squeeze anyway. And a rub. Just the way Kraglin likes it. And lo and behold - cold fingers or not, it rises dutifully to his touch. Soon, Yondu's got a solid handful, so hot it makes his fingertips feel like he's running them under scalding water, and is feeling stirrings of his own as Kraglin's subtle hip-thrusts grind back against his crotch. "Hey, this is actually working."

"I told you so, sir," whispers Kraglin. When Yondu opens his eyes he can just about make out the sharp lines of his throat, the shoulder that juts towards him when Kraglin cranes back and messily latches his mouth onto his.

Yondu tenses.

That's… unexpected. Not unwelcome. Just unexpected.

Not to be deterred, Kraglin captures his lower lip and – very, very gently – rolls it between his teeth. _Demanding_ ain't quite the word. More like… _deferentially insisting_ , until he gets what he wants.

Curious to see where this goes, Yondu opens his mouth a sliver and lets the warm wet length of Kraglin's tongue roll in. They're close enough that Yondu can make out Kraglin's half-lidded eyes, and he knows that his own must be burning because his first mate's cheeks are flushed from the combined light that pulses from them and his throbbing implant. Kraglin drags his tongue over the ridged roof of Yondu's mouth – _weird_ , Yondu thinks – and then flicks the tip against Yondu's.

Survey says: odd, but not unpleasant.

On Centauri-IV, mouths are weapons. The noises they emanate, be they songs, clicks, shrieks or whistles, complete the psionic circuit that connects a warrior to their yaka. It's that that transforms the sound-sensitive metal into deadly weapons. Knives that can slit a man's throat at a hundred paces, bullets that can riddle an enemy without ever coming into contact with a firearm, arrows that can stick five soldiers in a row like they've been impaled on an invisible kebab-stick, or fly through a heaving market crowd without leaving a single scratch. All operated by a sound. To use your gob for anything other than yapping, eating, or murdering goes against Yondu's grain; to use it for something as inane as a _kiss_ should alienate him completely.

But it doesn't.

Not that there's anything _pleasant_ about tasting the last thing your partner ate – in this case, one of those weird black protein blocks no one but Kraglin and Peter like (who claims they remind him of some Terran confectionary called liquorice). But he won't deny that kissing's grown on him, since the first time he had Kraglin pressed up against the console and the Hraxian leaned in and started licking his face.

Now that had been _fun_. The only thing that had gone through Yondu's mind at the time was how he couldn't remember if Hraxians were one of the species on the intergalactic redlist marked 'Warning: Carnivorous', and Kraglin had very nearly walked away from that encounter with an arrow in his throat. Which, all things considered, would have made Yondu's life turn out infinitely worse.

Heck, he could be snuggling with _Horuz_ right now.

So Yondu's not _entirely_ unpractised in this area. Not anymore. But Kraglin's had more experience, and it shows. Still, he patiently endures Yondu's clumsy attempts at reciprocation, and when they finally part with a wet smack – embarrassingly loud in the small, intimate space – he follows up with a light peck that smears saliva over Yondu's jaw.

"This is why I give the blowjobs," he murmurs. Yondu gives his thigh a hard pinch.

"I'll remind you that ya said that next time you're bitchin' me out for not returning the favour." Kraglin laughs, a rush of hot breath over Yondu's sensitized lips, and squeezes his wrists to entice him to continue what he began.

"Ain't such a tragedy, captain. You're good enough with your hands to make up for it."

"Oh, I am, am I?" He scrapes his nails under the mushroomed head; Kraglin arches and groans like he's wringing the very life out of him. "Yep. Maybe I am."

"Shouldn't have said nothin'," Kraglin pants as Yondu roughly manoeuvres his hips so that his backside's flush against him, and begins pumping in earnest. "That's gonna go to your head. And while your hands might work fuckin' magic when we're fuckin', they ain't so good once the joystick they're handling's attached to a ship at the other end."

" _Knew_ you weren't gonna let that one go…"

"No offence sir, but _you_ were the one who let go. Right after we ploughed into the _Milano_ 's top deck, if I remember rightly."

A loyal second Kraglin might be. But he can really be a snarky little shit when the mood hits him. Yondu scowls, and ceases all ministrations.

"Seems the joystick ain't the only thing I can let go of."

"Aw, c'mon…" When his first mate twists and presses an amorous kiss to the crook of Yondu's jaw, the captain relents – but not before taking hold of Kraglin's twisted torso and tugging until his lower half's forced to follow it round. There's not much space for complex choreography, but Kraglin just about manages to turn so that they're face-to-face without dislocating anything too vital. "What now?"

"Was gonna give it to you as a freebie," Yondu says. He rubs his crotch over Kraglin's until the Hraxian gets the idea and undulates like a particularly bony eel, sending an electric tingle rushing up his spine. Crimson light glances off the pod's inner epidermis, shadows writhing slick and dark. "Don't think you deserve it, after that little snipe." He's had too many people criticising his piloting abilities for one day. Kraglin snickers, and smoothes a thumb over the glowing implant.

"If this is the punishment I get, I'm gonna have to start insultin' ya more often."

"Don't," growls Yondu, grabbing a firm handful of buttock in each hand for better purchase as he thrusts and grinds, "you fucking _dare_."

"Yessir," the Hraxian mutters. Evidently, he sounded serious enough to strip the Kraglin of any thoughts of talking back in front of his men, which should feel like a victory, but somehow doesn't.

Yondu busies himself in Kraglin's body instead, trying to convince himself that the way he strokes and pulls, drawing the flesh over his first mate's heavy, throbbing cock in a harsh but not punishing rhythm, isn't his way of giving a silent apology. But if Kraglin is holding a grudge, it's soon forgotten.

They run their hands over as much of each other's bodies as they can reach, limbs testing the sack's slippery material as their breath mingles sourly and fingers clutch and claw at chill-bruised flesh. Their mouths find each other – which sounds just as dumb as it is, because it's fucking dark in there and the intermediary process earns Kraglin a long stripe of saliva over his cheek and Yondu a bitten nose – and this time there's no hesitation. Yondu lets his eyes drift shut and basks in the hand around his dick, the dick in his hands, the tongue in his mouth and the gentle clack as Kraglin's teeth bump his. The blizzard, the cave, the mound of maggot-sacks… All of it fades.

Or it does until Quill knees him in the kidneys.

" _Fucking_ hell!"

Yondu arches in a way that has nothing to do with pleasure and everything to do with the fact that Quill just burst an organ or two. He scrambles away from Kraglin in his attempt to hold his aching back, wrestle with the tight confines of the bag and kick Quill hard enough to return the favour, all at once. "The hell are you doing in there, boy?" he shouts, loud enough to penetrate the heavy fabric. "If you and your girlfriend are gonna get it on _right next to us_ , y'might have the _damn decency_ to do it without _breaking my spine_!"

The silence that follows is dubiously free of denials.

"You don't think," begins Kraglin uneasily. Yondu holds up his hand.

"I don't even wanna contemplate."

"Oh God. I think they actually might be-"

"You stop right there."

"Do they have to? _Right next to us?_ " At that, Yondu levels him an arch stare that translates even through darkness. "What?"

But pointing out the blatant hypocrisy can wait until morning. All the desire Kraglin's laboured to kindle drains out of him, and Yondu makes do with shuffling as far from Quill's jerking limbs as he can get – damn, the girl's _good_ ; or maybe she's just using the blanket as a cover to garrotte him, which right now sounds like the preferable prospect – and slapping away Kraglin's hands when they started wandering optimistically downwards.

"Ah, quit it. I ain't in the mood no more."

"Got a headache?" Kraglin teases. But he relents when Yondu bundles him up in his arms and buries his cold nose in the crook of his neck.

* * *

Three shifts later, the storm's over. They're curled closest to the exothermasphere with Gamora and Quill – motionless at last, thank god – snoring away on their left. It's an hour past sunrise, and the morning light pours through the glacier like whisky filling a tumbler. The cavern is awash with torpid ribbons of gold. They're warm, they're content; there'll be time to estimate the distance to the next settlement and debate whether eating yellow snow for breakfast is a good idea or not, as soon as they've relished this final hour of doing absolutely nothing.

Or maybe not _nothing_.

Because Yondu snorts awake to the feel of long fingers lifting and squeezing a very private part of his anatomy, and this time he doesn't resist.

* * *

 **Aliens who are adverse to kissing is, for some reason, one of my favourite tropes. Sooooo... as usual, tell me what you thought of this chapter! Please...? :3**


	6. Pelvic Sorcerers Snr

**Here we go... The last chapter. Hope you've all had as much fun reading this fic as I've had writing it! And that the little reverse timeskip between sections 1 and 2 of this chapter isn't too confusing.**

* * *

When one realises that one's body is in the process of doing something one is very shortly going to regret, time splits into slow motion.

It's a phenomenon that has been observed, documented, charted, plotted and commented on, at great length and with an unnecessary abundance of long words, by every philosophical and biological school known to the Nova Empire. The biologists will, for the most part, inform you that it comes about because of a heightened state of awareness due to spiked adrenaline levels in the blood. The philosophers are more of the opinion that the universe is simply a sadist, and wants to eke out your trepidation for as long as possible.

Both camps, unfortunately, fail to provide a solution.

Quill watches his hand descend on the conference room's biolock with a sort of horrified curiosity – the conference room where Yondu and Kraglin have been left alone for ten whole minutes; no, he's just being paranoid, _surely they wouldn't_ – and finds himself immersed in a particularly potent case.

Really though, this has been in the works a long time.

A very long time.

Years, in fact. According to the philosophers, the universe has been rubbing its omnipotent little paws as it watched Quill blunder into private quarters and down unpopulated corridors in the middle of a quiet night cycle for almost two decades now. Today is simply… The final overture.

The finale.

The grand prestige.

Hand will hit biolock, door will shoot open, and the truth will be revealed. There's a sense of necessity to it. Natural order.

Natural order or otherwise, Quill isn't keen on cooperating.

 _No,_ he thinks. _No, please; I already know, it's not like they're_ subtle _about it or anything, just because I haven't actually walked in on them doesn't mean I'm_ blind –

However, the main symptom of this sickness (beyond the sense of encroaching doom) is a complete and utter helplessness to do anything about it.

Try as he might, mind railing at a body trapped behind a soundproof pane, Quill can't stop. His hand continues its journey blithely, merrily, blissfully unaware of the horrors it is about to reveal. He can see every ligament elongate, every contracting tendon and supple crease of skin. He just can't make it _stop_. That doesn't prevent him from trying, though -

 _-Don't open the door, please, please…_

His palm hits home. Electricity stipples each digit, mapping out the whorls.

 _No no nonono_

…And the biolock is silent.

Peter clings to the hope that it might have broken in his absence, that it hasn't recognized him, that he'd been suddenly and mysteriously deleted from every system in the Galaxy. But as usual, he's wrong. After a ruminative three seconds (stretched by Peter's panic-ridden perspective into a matter of hours) the contraption buzzes its approval and the door shoots open in a whoosh of recycled air.

* * *

"What?"

That's Horuz. He sounds dubious. Yondu doesn't blame him. "We supposed to be a _team_ now, or summin'?"

As if to show his disgust at the prospect, he starts poking the flashing icon on the holographic desk display – the one which, unless Yondu's knowledge of the Nova Corps' defence system deceives him, is liable to start the sirens blaring and rig the entire fortress (that prongs from the surface of Xandar like one of his gold-capped canines) to self-destruct. Hissing, the smallest of Quill's pet freaks swats his hand away. Horuz cradles the limb to his chest. It sports three new scratches – Yondu'll have to see about getting him a tetanus shot when they got back to ship, although really, if ya ask him, idiot deserves to suffer. He's right, because Horuz then proceeds to glower at Yondu as if this's all _his_ fault.

"Just for one job." Kraglin answers Horuz so that his captain doesn't have to. "Suck it up."

He peels back his lips. Fangs and diseased gums flash menacingly under the swanky Xandarian solar panels. Horuz bristles, shoulders raising as he considers upping the posturing match – but then his gaze flits to Yondu, who is watching the exchange with a carefully neutral expression from his throne at the high end of the conference table, and thinks better of it.

Good. Too short notice to find another experienced bo'sun. Anyway, Xandar sucks for dumping bodies. Water too low in pH and volcanoes too few and far between.

Yondu lets his hand rest over his arrow. Just in case.

Because things haven't _changed_ – changed is too harsh, too brutal a word. More like they've _evolved_. They – Yondu and Kraglin – they've taken the bare elements afforded to them and built them into something new. House o'cards outta a crappy hand. And if the captain trusts Kraglin to head his own jobs occasionally without running every detail by him – even lets him pilot the flagship when he asks, so long as no knickknacks get broken (Kraglin ain't as iron-stomached as Peter, but bet him fifty units he can't do ten barrel rolls in a row and he'll bite every time, much to Yondu and the other sane crewmembers' horror)…

Well, that's their business.

But still. The message's powerful enough to percolate Horuz's skull (which Kraglin knows from innumerable attempts to punch through it in bar-brawls past, present and still-to-come to be one of the thickest).

It goes something like this: all Ravagers are expendable, but Kraglin isn't all Ravagers.

And yeah, there's others that can whip up a strategy for hitting a port, in and out with no fuss and minimal carnage. And there's others who know the precise amount of pressure that's needed to dislodge someone's spine and pull it out through the back of their neck – Yondu's never mastered the trick, no matter how many times Kraglin shows him. There's better pilots and better marksman and (possibly) better hagglers. But what there ain't is another Kraglin, or another whatever-Kraglin-is-to-Yondu. Thus and therefore, Kraglin's the least expendable of the lot.

So if he wants to piss on the other Ravagers' territory, Yondu lets him get on with it. Lad might get a few black eyes if he presses his tough act on those with less sense than Horuz (few and far between), but the balance'll even eventually. Life'll sort itself out; it has a tendency to do so. And if not… If Kraglin's ever dumb enough to push too far – _which he ain't_ – it's Yondu who's holding the other end of his leash. And he's pretty decent with a choke-chain. Ain't nobody denying that.

So he sits back and lets Horuz's angry breathing fade, along with Kraglin's posturing and Quill's nervous attempts at small-talk.

Ah yes. Quill.

His other idiot, Quill.

Quill, who keeps side-eyeing him like he's gonna pounce on him the moment his back's turned, skin him, and serve up his buttocks for fillet mignon.

Yondu relocates his glare onto his not-so-prodigious protégé, just to show him that he ain't being as subtle as he thinks. Heck, does the kid think him incapable of holding civilised conversation or something? S'just _rude_.

Although thinking about it, it may be _very slightly_ justified. Seeing as the last time he and Quill'd attempted a civilised conversation of their own had been while they were kicking the snow from their boot treads after trekking across that icy backwater shithole, back when a certain fluorescent-haired troll was still burnin' at the forefront of Yondu's mind.

(The fires have since ebbed to a slow smoulder, although they're far from dying. Yondu don't forgive and Yondu don't forget.)

Yondu snickers at the memory, drawing a confused glance from Dey. It had taken all four guardians to wrestle them apart – the Ravagers, of course, had put their feet up, cracked open the single bottle of moonshine they'd managed to salvage, and started taking out bets. Few laid money on Quill.

Still. This ain't nothing like that.

This job ain't personal. This is _business_. Business means there's money on the table, and when there's money on the table, there ain't no trouble until said money's safe in Yondu's pocket – excepting the trouble he's paid to cause, o'course. Even if it means he and his crew've gotta get up close and cosy with the Nova Corps. Even if he's gotta play it sweet with Nova Prime herself (which shouldn't be too hard; five hundred units says the old bat ain't been laid in centuries. He'll screw her til her wig falls off, if it'll line his ship's coffers. And – yeah, yeah – if Kraglin don't mind.)

Nope, business is business. Yondu leans towards Dey with a sharp-toothed grin, and gets down to it.

"How much you offerin'?"

Dey tells him.

Yondu's planning on playing hard-to-get, though his eyebrows shoot up internally. Zqo however, still new to her position on what Kraglin's taken to referring to as 'Ravager High Command', violently and loudly chokes on her water, which gives the game up somewhat.

Yondu makes a mental note to put her on bog duty for a week. But he ain't complaining. Eighty million units ain't nothing to turn up your nose at – especially when you haven't gotta bang some wrinkly old bag to get it.

Dey holds out a hand. "Do we have a deal?"

Yondu, after a moment more's fabricated thought – just to keep him on his toes – takes it.

"So all I gotta do is steal this infinity doohickey from some dumb Terrans?"

" _Collect_ ," Dey corrects. "The mission statement details that you are expected to convince the Terrans of the artefact's instability, and of our superior abilities to contain it."

"Aw, shit." Yondu makes a face. "Diplomacy. I ain't too great at diplomacy."

"Neither are the Guardians," Dey agrees, to unanimous denials and several choice expletives that prove his point rather more than they undermine it. The 'I am Groot' sounds particularly incendiary – hitting the rebellious phase, Yondu supposes. He'd pity Peter if he didn't find it so fucking hilarious. "Which is why I shall be accompanying you also. Think of this as a test-drive for future legitimate employment opportunities within the Nova Empire – the monetary benefits of which, I might add, will be substantial." He coughs. "In addition, Nova Prime has agreed that this mission will provide ample opportunity for us to… ah… settle our differences. Repay outstanding debts, that sort of thing." Yondu looks long and hard at Peter, who avoids eye contact. "Forget old grudges…"

"Yada, yada, yada." Yondu grudgingly relieves Peter from the weight of his glare – boy's really squirming quite delightfully now. He slouches down in his seat and crosses his arms, actions accompanied by a cacophony of leathery squeaks, and glowers up at Dey from under lowered brow ridges. "You want us to all hold hands and sing along to the boy's walkman. Got it. Just one question – why us?"

Sure, he's already said yes. But it can't hurt to know. Because the peacekeepers of the Nova quadrant and the self-appointed, hoity-toity and very-almost-squeaky-clean Guardians of the fucking Galaxy ain't gonna team up with no bunch of grubby Ravagers; at least, not without damn good reason. Far be it from him to question their judgment when the units'll be in his pocket at the end of the day – but believe it or not, Yondu does like to know what he's gettin' into before he tosses himself and his crew in face-first. Occasionally.

Dey seems surprised by the question.

"Out of all of us, it's only your Ravagers who've actually _been_ to Terra." He motions towards the Guardians, who have formed a semi-circle of hostile silhouettes as far away from the Ravagers as they can get without being out the door. "Quill excepted, of course."

"Although," Quill interrupts, "seeing as you only dropped by long enough to _snatch_ me and didn't stick around to sniff the proverbial lily wreathes, I still don't get what you're doing here."

This time he does meet his eyes, but only to scowl at him like he's hoping that if he does it hard enough, Yondu'll curl up and expire like a Grallorian space-slug that's taken a bath in an industrial sized salt-shaker. Yondu's riposte is a surly sneer.

Really, they should be askin' why _Quill's_ on the team – don't the Nova Corps have some rule about putting people into emotionally compromising situations? And hell, you don't get much more 'emotionally compromising' than sending someone back to the home planet they were abducted from. Not to mention expectin' them to play chummy with said abductor. This is gonna be one hell of an awkward trip – heck, Yondu's almost looking forwards to it.

Having him around's gonna piss the boy off no end. Ergo, Yondu's going to make an effort to be around as much as possible.

So he gives Dey his best angelic smile – Dey looks slightly disturbed, but let's see him live offworld for a few centuries without access to government-covered dental care – and does his best to project _concerned citizen just doin' his bit for the safety of the Galaxy._

"When do we start?"

* * *

They call a sojourn for lunch – _refreshments_ , Corpsman Dey calls it, ignoring Rocket's under-the-breath mimicry. Yondu waits until the important folk have filtered out the door. Then he hooks Kraglin by the arm and tugs enough to make a point.

"Strategy meeting."

His first mate slows immediately, nodding Zqo and Thrabba ahead. They obey without question.

"Boss?" he asks, after Dey's given them a last wary look – returned with flat stares that just _dare_ him to comment – sighed, and left them to the empty conference room (but not without making a show of counting every datapen). Yondu parks his ass on the desk and props filthy boots on the back of Dey's chair.

"C'mere," he says. Kraglin comes. Yondu takes the chance to look him over: his Adam's apple's bobbin' up and down his gangly neck like a buoy over waves, and his shoulders are too flat, held stiff in an effort to look relaxed. This place gives Kraglin the creeps – he's trying to hide it, but Yondu can tell.

"What's up?" Kraglin enquires, even as he scopes out the angles of the ceiling and sweeps his sleeve under the desk edge to clear any eavesdropping bugs. "There a… problem?" He's careful not to go into detail. The walls have ears round here. So do the doors, carpets, and the plush finish on the chairs – Yondu screws his crusty heels into Dey's cushion with unguarded delight.

"Naw. Ain't no problem." Satisfying himself that they aren't being watched – or at least, if they are, the Xandarians are havin' the decency to be _subtle_ about it – Kraglin goes back to fiddling with his knives. He's got 'em stowed in the lining of his coat (ignoring Dey's demand that they relinquish all weapons and undergo a full body scan before setting foot in the Xandarian summit – but if he's gonna be working hand-in-hand with Guardians and Ravagers alike, Yondu figures Dey's gotta get used to being ignored sooner rather than later). There's one on his chest, two in easy grabbing distance on either side of his waist, one pushed down into the seam by his knee and a final lashed to his forearm, tucked up tight to the crook of his elbow. Kraglin touches them like clockwork. It's a nervous tick: quick, rushed little movements that he tries to disguise with a sniff, a scratch, twisting his boot soles against the squeaky-clean floor.

Course, Yondu catches 'em all.

Chest, waist, waist, knee, arm. Like one of Quill's jerkier dance routines.

Normally, Yondu would reprimand him for being too obvious. But, while he might be hiding it better, this place's givin' him the heebie-jeebies too. Far too much pomp and polish and clean surfaces. He can't do much about the first and second. But the third…

"Hey," he says instead. He stops those telltale hands mid-dance and reels Kraglin in with a leer, lifting his legs from Dey's chair long enough to slot his first mate between them. "Ever wondered what it'd be like to fuck on a conference table?"

Being the considerate first mate he is, Kraglin does his best to accommodate his captain's desires. Even when it means breaking a coupla bitty pieces of Xandarian legislation regardin' public indecency, and misuse and abuse of Nova Corps property. Sure, they've just negotiated amnesty for all past crimes committed in this quadrant; and sure, perhaps it ain't wise to go tempting fate by using their new status as _Official Fuckin' Associates of the Nova Fuckin' Empire_ (give or take a few expletives) to get down and dirty on the conference table.

But hey. Xandarians take long lunchbreaks.

Too much choice between the bruschetta and the canapés, or something (else they'll all be busy keeping an eye on the Ravagers, who will be filling their pockets with hors d'oeuvres and silverware when they think nobody's looking).

So that gives them plenty of time. Time to do the nasty, mop up the mess, sit back and grin at each other when Dey marches back in and slaps his hands down right where they were writhing about not minutes before. They don't get much _out_ of it – not money-wise, anyways. But the satisfaction of defiling Xandarian property is too great a temptation to resist.

"You're a terrible influence, sir," whispers Kraglin as they strip (there's a couple more knives than Yondu expected, but a bit o'blood in the bedroom ain't nothing new, and it means the lad's getting better at hiding them). It seems like the sort of conversation you have in whispers, although they both know that once the biolock engages the hollow walls will be pumped full of static particles through which no sound can transmit. Good ol' paranoid galactic governments. Ain't nobody listening but each other, and the poor sods in the surveillance room.

Yondu tosses his shirt onto the table within easy grabbing distance – he may be daring, but he's not gonna hang his underwear from the lampshade – and pulls Kraglin in by the belt loops.

"Shouldn't you be trying to talk me out of this, then?" he teases. His hands run up Kraglin's back. They curl around his shoulders, before tugging him demandingly down for a kiss. It's not often Yondu instigates those, and so Kraglin reciprocates with enthusiasm – sliding his tongue along the dry chapped seam of his captain's lips and eagerly attacking his belt.

"Not for all the units in the galaxy, sir." And hell. He's looking at Yondu again. _Really_ looking at him – so close that Yondu can see every dirty pore and scruffy tuft of stubble, and knows that Kraglin'll be able to see the same. It's like he's gazing right through him, as dumb as that sounds. Like his skin's made of translucent blue glass and all Kraglin's gotta do is stare, to see through to the soul beneath. "Y'know, sometimes I think I could look at you forever."

Yondu shudders. Oh, he knows what Kraglin wants to hear. But he also knows that Kraglin knows that he ain't never going to say it.

He makes do with "Why? Have I got somethin' in my teeth?" But even as he says those words – the wrong words – he's thinking, that he's bloody lucky to have someone who looks at him like that.

If Kraglin's disappointed, he's wise enough not to show it.

"You always have stuff in your teeth, captain. It's kinda gross."

"Like you're one to lecture on dental hygiene."

"Hey!" Mock offended, Kraglin pushes him back onto the table. Well. It's more of a nudge, really. Gravity, momentum, and Yondu relaxing his stomach muscles effectively completes the job. "You like my mouth enough when it's suckin' you off!"

"Yeah, seein' as that's all it's good for!"

Snickering, Kraglin presses a kiss to the side of his mouth and pulls away before Yondu can reciprocate. His attempt's rewarded with an undisrupted view of Kraglin's yellowed smirk. "And I was just thinkin' you were starting to like kissin' too." Ain't much point in answerin' that. Yondu scoots back onto the table so there's enough room to pull Kraglin up and over him. Then he wraps him in an embrace so tight it's practically a headlock and enthusiastically proves him right.

"Not when you nip," he says, once they've parted. Kraglin does that fluttery pleased blink of his when Yondu thumbs spit from his slippery lips. Then gently, dangerously gently, like some sorta domesticated predator that you forget killing comes natural to until you see it on the hunt – the sort Yondu still chases through the towering Centaurian forests in his dreams – ducks his head to mouth along Yondu's jaw.

"Liar," he murmurs, once he's reached his pulse. When he lets a serrated tooth drag over the thin blue flesh he earns a full-body shiver, and Yondu thinks he might just be right.

"No marks," he says anyway. Kraglin pulls back and _looks_ at him. Yondu relents. "Okay. But only where no one can see."

"No one but me, captain," Kraglin corrects.

"Yeah, yeah. Nobody but you."

* * *

Peter, being the Guardians' most passably Xandarian face (and the only one besides Gamora with any concept of table manners) has been given the honour of parking his ass next to the firmly toned, delicately wrinkled and perfectly postured posterior of Nova Prime Rael. Well. Dey _said_ it was an honour. Peter rather thinks that the corpsman wants to laugh from his seat opposite, while Peter has to simper and smile and pass the leader of the entire galactic quadrant the salt.

On cue, Rael dabs at her lips with a pristine white napkin and motions to the platter on Peter's left.

"If you wouldn't mind?"

"Certainly," replies Peter. He tries for a charming smile. It comes out wooden, and the arm with which he levers the platter – a sliver of coloured glass, piled high with pastries that some poor chef has been up from the wee hours of the morning crimping into tiny Nova crests – is stiff as a mannequin's. Gamora doesn't look at him, but she gives his thigh a gentle squeeze under the table. Peter feels himself relax.

He and his team have been… improving lately. Understanding each other more. Getting to know the tics and cues that mean someone's out of their comfort zone, or about to embark on a murderous rampage that'll muddy up the records that have, for these past two years, somewhat miraculously stayed clean. They know he's doing his best, to act as the Guardians' personable face. And they're all there to support him.

Then Drax – tucking heartily into something rare and juicy that looks disturbingly of a size with Rocket – gestures to him with his forsaken eating utensil and inquires whether he's still suffering from that Crafu'urian diarrheic bug he'd picked up at the last port.

In the ensuing silence, Rael carefully replaces her pastry. She's good enough not to lean away from him – has probably been vaccinated against every contagion in the quadrant, anyway.

Peter scrambles to assure her that Drax's just joking – and halts Drax's protest that he does not joke by prodding Gamora, who in turn rolls her eyes and delivers a kick to the man's shin. (Drax turns wounded eyes on Peter, knowing him to be the true culprit, which makes him look disturbingly pitiful and Peter feel like an absolute douche. But it's not like he had a _choice_. There're some things you don't mention to galactic leaders, and bodily functions – particularly those of the _messy_ variety – are one of them.)

After that's over, there's not much Peter can do to salvage the situation but blush, glower at the snickering Ravagers and ensure that the rest of the Guardians are behaving themselves.

Of course, he looks to Gamora first.

Gamora. Good old Gamora.

Most trustworthy one of the bunch to not commit some grand social atrocity, like playing 'let's see how many traditional Xandarian delicacies we can regurgitate before we hit last night's protein blocks'. Least trustworthy to resist the urge to shove her fork through the nearest Ravager's eye for the duration of an entire meal.

Still, she's not caused any trouble yet – more than can be said for Drax. She's concentrating on placing bite-sized titbits on her tongue in the order of the rainbow, red through violet, and returning Rael's small talk with answers that say enough to be civil but somehow get away with saying very little at all. And shooting him the occasional glance, of course. Just to make sure he doesn't wuss out and plead loo break.

Dammit.

Peter follows the table down, alighting eventually on Groot. The fauna colossus has almost hit the peak of his growth spurt – if you put him on time lapse for twenty four hours you'll see his gnarly legs _stretching_ like they'd been lashed to a Kree torture rack. He's been served with a plate of fresh shoots and decomposing vegetation, the smell of which had to be masked by a squirt of special sterilizing spray before the Xandarians would deign to enter the room – Groot bore the indignity with grace and poise, pausing only to pick out the sugar-steeped locusts that had been arranged in an ornamental mound at the platter's far corner before tucking in.

(Currently the locusts have found their way to Rocket's plate. This is despite the fact that Rael, Peter, Gamora and Drax are between them, and that Peter hasn't seen either of them move.)

Now, dish cleared, Groot's chattering away to the Ravager with the purple scaly ears and the boobs.

And what boobs they are.

Peter knows better than to assume they automatically mean 'female', or even infer the presence of a binary gender in the first place; but that doesn't mean he can't appreciate them, or the way they fill her tight leather overcoat.

Or he would. In other circumstances. His present circumstance being the green-skinned Zan Whobrian on Rael's opposite side who follows the direction of his gaze, only to swivel back and shoot him an ominous look. The sort of look that says: _I'm the best assassin in the galaxy and I can kill you with my pinky from twenty paces_. Peter, who can take a hint, hastily averts his eyes to neutral territory.

It's obvious that Scaly-ears doesn't understand a word Groot's saying. But from the way she's nodding along, she is getting the knack of identifying the sentiments that underpin his iconic phrase. Peter's not bothered; Groot can seed love and friendship through the Ravagers all he wants. Heaven knows, they need it. It's Rocket who worries him.

Rocket, whose antics kick up at least ten notches in unpredictability as soon as his favourite muscle-come-houseplant is paying attention to someone else.

Rocket who claimed an entire bulwark of the _Milano_ 's main hangar to serve as his personal 'trophy wall', which now contains such diverse delights as fossilised Duhrak faeces ("it's a collector's item!" he insists), the tusk of an endangered creature from south Xandar that Peter can only describe as some sort of airborn narwhal-baboon, and several cybernetic limbs.

Rocket, who is eyeing Nova Prime Rael's elaborate hairpiece out of the corner of his eye as he stuffs his furry cheeks with purple vol-au-vaunts.

Peter's gut rarely lets him down when it comes to predicting what calamity his little companion's going to fling himself into next. Right now his small intestine is tying itself in knots. (Although to be fair, that could have been the quiche; he'd _thought_ it looked an unsettlingly psychedelic shade of green.)

This is going to end badly. He knows it. He _knows_ it. By the end of the day, that coiled silver plait will either be adorning Rocket's trophy wall, or the rodent will be looking at ten years on the inside for the assault of a government dignitary.

Rocket's too far down the table for Peter to catch his attention without drawing that of Rael or Dey. Sure, he could always engage in a bout of furious sign language over Nova Prime's head, but the other side of the table is lined with Ravagers, and while they appear to be engrossed with gobbling dainties and scrapping over who gets the last blue sausage roll, Peter knows that as soon as an opportunity arises for them to laugh at him, they will do so, and they will do so uproariously and without relent.

Thank God Yondu's not here.

That azuremost of a-holes would probably spend the rest of the meal _smirking_ at him until Peter broke and punched him in the face. The bastard's perfected his 'See? Looking after a bunch of idiots ain't so easy as you thought' expression since Peter started running with the Guardians, which wouldn't be half as infuriating if Yondu wasn't _right_.

Peter waits until Rocket's beady eyes have swivelled to Rael's bun for the fourteenth time. Then he tilts back on his chair, faking a stretch, and practices his own iteration of the Gamora-whose-pinkies-are-deadly-from-a-distance glare behind Rael's back, as he slowly draws his finger across his throat. Rocket shows his teeth. But he hunkers down in his seat, and returns his attention to stealing the most succulent lumps off Dey's plate when he thinks the corpsman isn't looking. (Dey, to his credit, only scoots his place mat a few inches away from the little scrounger, and continues eating in determined silence.) Peter lets himself relax.

Then Drax has to open his mouth.

"Why do you want to kill Rocket?"

 _Finger across throat means death._ Peter could kick himself. "I don't," he tries to explain, as Rael turns an artfully calm face towards him. "It was… it was a joke, Drax. Just a joke between friends." Drax narrows his eyes at him.

"Good. Because we are friends. And friends do not slit other friends' throats."

"Well said!" Rocket says, and breaks into one of his horrendous fake guffaws. It shakes his little belly until his whiskers quiver. "Now – if you'll 'scuse me a minute – I gotta go use the lil' boy's room. Bladder of a small rodent an' all." And with that, he spits a bone to clatter on the edge of Dey's plate – the corpsman rears back in disgust – belches, wipes his mouth none-so-delicately on the back of his paw, and hops down from his stool before sauntering nonchalantly out the door.

Oh no. Oh _hell no_.

Nevermind that he's just breached half the etiquette codes of Xandarian fine-dining – if Rocket thinks Peter's going to leave him unsupervised for _one minute_ in a fortress full of cutting-edge weaponry and interesting compounds that go boom… Well, he's more insane than _Thanos_.

"Me too!" he blurts.

He shoves his chair back with a horrendous screech and makes to sprint after Rocket. Then remembers that if he runs out, the rest of the team are liable to follow, Xandarian table manners and the fate of the Galaxy be damned, and make an even more magnificent mess than things are already becoming. He halts. Spins back to his fellows with a hastily manufactured grin. "Uh – Drax, Gamora, Groot… stay."

Gamora shoots him a look of intense betrayal. Groot smiles and waves. Drax is too busy tucking into his sixth rack of rodent-ribs to care.

There's no time to fumble through the eight bows and two extravagant hand-flourishes he's supposed to complete before he can exit the room, but he dances through the first set with demented vigour, then decides that Terran stupidity and Drax's previous overshare regarding a certain never-to-be-mentioned-again diarrheic should carry him the rest of the way. "Alright – uh, sorry, sorry, forgot the next bit; be back in five!" And he rushes out.

* * *

Of course, Rocket's nowhere in sight.

Peter turns a full circle, scoping the ceilings for crawl-sized air ducts or water pipes – there aren't any; the Nova Empire might be unbearably _formal_ , but they're not stupid – and squinting down every sleek white contour of the blanched geometric décor as if he expects Rocket to have grown a winter coat for camouflage. But nope. It's official. For fifty paces in either direction, Peter is alone. Rocket is loose. May God help them all.

Peter takes a moment to grind his knuckles against his forehead.

Damn it. _Damn it_.

How did the little blighter even get that far? It's not like he's the leggiest of creatures – he must have broken into a sprint the moment the door shut behind him. The conniving furry imp.

Peter tilts his crown back against the wall, trying to think where his teammate would go first. Then he remembers the havoc Rocket's capable of causing in the time it takes him to hum the first verse of ' _Ooo-oh Child_ ', growls in helpless frustration, and sets off down the corridor at a run.

He's no idea where he's going. He's certainly got no idea of where Rocket's going – but right now there's no time to postulate, no time to _plan_ ; he's just got to find him, and find him fast.

And enlist any help he can along the way.

The guards are out. Peter doubts that the Xandarian ministry would take kindly to their pet heroes renewing their criminal records, not two years after they'd been scrubbed squeaky again. With their place on this mission (and his chance to see Terra again) hanging in the balance, Peter's determined that their ledgers aren't going to see a single drop of red, not until there's genuine earth-soil back beneath his feet. But if he can't use the guards…

Peter's mind scrambles from face to face, dismissing them one by one. Gamora and the others? Too busy playing nice with Rael. And anyway, extracting his buddies from under Nova Prime's nose without raising suspicions is a job even he balks at. Nope, he needs someone not trapped exchanging pleasantries with the leader of the Nova Empire. Someone impartial; someone with an investment in ensuring Rocket doesn't get all of their asses blasted off-world and back to the Kyln. Someone who's an expert in finding their way around highly secured locales…

Peter's feet thud to a halt. Yondu. He needs Yondu and Kraglin.

"Fuck."

'Fuck' partially because he just admitted that he _needs Yondu and Kraglin_ , but mostly because he has no idea where they are. Or where he is. Or where anything is, really.

Peter scans the walls in the vague hope there'll be a map, but obviously, putting up directions would ruin the 'every corridor looks exactly the same' vibe that the Nova Corps has strived so hard to perfect.

Still, all's not lost. Peter's never subscribed to the whole too-proud-to-ask-directions thing (Yondu does, but Yondu also has a terrible tendency to get lost, not to mention crash his M-ship into Peter's while they're innocently cruising along and send them both spiralling down onto a scarcely-inhabited hunk of frozen yellow rock…)

And lo and behold – there's a guard, stationed at the end of the hallway.

Peter marches up to her, trying to project as much authority as an unarmed Terran can. He raps twice on her ornamental cuirass to get her attention. Steely blue eyes relinquish their hooks from the middle distance, and focus on him. Peter draws in a nervous gulp. She's… _big_.

"The conference room," he demands. "Which way?" Her arm raises with a grind of vambrace on cowlter (and seriously, _body armour_? Who even wears _body armour_ nowadays? Sure, it's decorative and all, but how's she meant to battle off a Kree invasion when she can't do high-knees?) She jabs her finger back in the general direction where Peter came.

"Um. Okay. So you're not very talkative. Strong and silent type, right?" Her eyes, shaded by the visor, narrow. Peter backs up. "But hey! Appreciate the help. So. Uh. Where do I go after I've… walked in that… direction?"

A long pause, during which the guard probably weighs up the benefits of skewering him versus the quantitative tedium of the lecture she'd have to sit through if she did. Then the arm curves – _screeeek_ , goes the plating. She points first right, then left, then left again, and then, bafflingly, straight up. Peter commits it to memory anyway. He runs it through his head twice, nods, and hops out of skewering range. "Right! Cheers. I'll be off then. Have fun with the uh, guarding." And with that, Peter grins, winks at her, and makes his escape.

So Yondu thinks he can get out of sitting through a ceremonial Xandarian dinner? Well, he's sure as hell not getting out of this.

"Y'know, when I tell ya to fuck me I mean really _fuck me_. Not give me a massage with yer dick."

Kraglin rolls his eyes and mutters "Yes, sir," – then proceeds to entirely ignore his captain, continuing at a leisurely, shallow pace that has Yondu squirming in an effort to get more of his body onto his first mate's cock.

"Oh, _come on_! I'm gonna ground your M-ship. I'm gonna steal your protein-cubes, I'm gonna – I'm gonna half your cut!"

"Ain't my fault the table legs keep _creakin'_ ," Kraglin complains. "I don't wanna break nothing."

"If this table's survived half a crew of Ravagers kickin' their heels on it, not to mention that damn _maniac_ of Quill's playin' _sculptor_ with his favourite knife, I reckon it can take a bit of fucking! Damn it, Kraglin; I'm gonna half your cut and give the rest to _Horuz_."

That does it.

Kraglin's face tightens, and he drills into Yondu so hard that he scoots him back half a metre and bounces his head off the table. Damn Xandarian marble. No bloody _friction_. Still, it's a result; Yondu, who bit his tongue when his jaws snapped together, grins at his first mate through a mouthful of oily blue blood. "Now _that's_ more like it. P'raps I should threaten ya more often."

"You threaten everybody all the time, sir," Kraglin bows his chin to his chest and concentrates on slamming his hips forwards with all the strength his wiry form can muster. He pushes on Yondu's thighs, opening him up further, sliding that extra inch in that makes his toes curl and his nails scrape the enamel table top. Yondu lets out an appreciative moan. Just to let Kraglin know that he's doin' a decent job. Positive reinforcement, and all. "You just never actually _do_ it."

It's hard to focus on comebacks when there's a dick up your ass. So Yondu just locks his ankles over Kraglin's knobbly back and stows that comment in the back of his mind so he can ruminate over punishments at a later date.

Kraglin's a scarecrow of sinew and bone. His hair's slicked back with sweat, the tattoos on his chest half-obscured by the scratches where Yondu's blunt nails have raked, and his face is blotchy red. The tendons in his neck stand out like engine rods wrapped in clingfilm. Yondu, thrusting back as much as this position allows, traces them with a blue finger and cackles.

"Ya look like you're about t'have an aneurysm," he says, between his pants. "You gettin' too old for this?"

"I'm half your age, boss," Kraglin puffs. Yondu bangs his heel against his spine. "What? You embarrassed?" His sharp teeth catch the light as he runs sweaty fingers over Yondu's cheek. "Don't be, I like it." Yondu scoffs.

"You should be the one that's embarrassed. Bein' worn out from a bit o'physical exertion. _Especially_ if you're such a young brat."

Not that Kraglin's comment hit home or nothing. Because heck, he ain't _that_ old.

Yondu's forced to eat his words though; he winces when he feels the Hraxian up his pace, as if to prove him wrong.

Let it never be said that taunting isn't an excellent motivator.

With that in mind, he keeps at it. "P'raps I should start making you run laps round the _Eclector_ – we'll have ya fighting fit again by the time we reach Terra, and maybe then we can find a table for you to give me a _proper_ fuck on."

"What's wrong with a bed?" asks Kraglin. "Seriously sir, I swear you got like, a _desk kink_ or something. S'that even a thing?"

Tiring of the effort it takes to hold himself above Yondu while hammering down, he sits back on his haunches and, with an inquisitive glance for permission – which Yondu grants with a regal nod – drags his captain's hind half back and _twists_. One of Yondu's calves ends up slung over Kraglin's shoulder. The other is pinned beneath his first mate's legs, their pelvises locked together like pieces in a jigsaw. The new angle drags his cock directly over Yondu's prostate. He clutches for Kraglin on instinct, hands grasping the firm thighs that brace his hips, and lets out a low, breathless sound that has Kraglin's rhythm juddering briefly before it returns, harder than ever.

" _Damn_ , captain."

"Bed's… not half… as fun," he gasps. Scrunches his face and arches and tries to remember what else he was going to say. Something… about Kraglin… liking it _slow_ and _gentle_ with rose petals scattered all around… and all that mushy _romantic_ crap…

"I dunno, sir" says Kraglin sceptically. He places his palm under Yondu's raised knee and pushes, so that his whole body clenches and his cock bobs purple and swollen over his abdomen, leaking milky beads. "Least a bed's got pillows."

"Pillows're for sleeping. But hey, if you wanna go nap that badly, don't let me stop ya."

Kraglin watches him unreadably for a moment, hips jerking on automatic. Then he stops and makes as if to pull out.

"If you say so, boss."

"Don't you _fucking dare_ -" Yondu almost kicks him in the face in his struggle to keep him inside.

"What?" Kraglin's eyes are bugging out in exaggerated innocence, but there's a demon glimmering beneath; a teasing, devious, _evil_ little demon that Yondu might respect if he wasn't so concerned with getting Kraglin moving again. "I figured that since you're even older, sir, you could do with a little shut-eye. Maybe half an hour to recuperate…?"

Yondu drags his torso up (tricky when his leg's still hooked over Kraglin's arm, but no way is he flopping back like some boneless eel and leaving himself open to more cracks about his age), just far enough that he can deliver an open-palmed smack to the side of Kraglin's head.

"Ow!"

"Quit your whingin' and get with the fucking." Kraglin gripes and grumbles and does what he's told. Good lad.

Now they've got the obligatory banter out of the way, Yondu lets himself relax. The muscles in his sides stretch out; he shuts his eyes and _feels_ as electric sparks streak through him, gathering in the bottom of his belly and lighting up his implant brighter than a bursting star. There's not much need for talking after that. Kraglin establishes a deep, penetrating rhythm that scrapes his dick over his captain's prostate like he's trying to batter through a portcullis. It leaves both of them gasping, and when Kraglin clumsily grabs Yondu's hand and interlaces their fingers, Yondu lets him. Even squeezes back. Just a little.

It's – well, Yondu's not soft enough to call it _perfect_ , but it sure as hell's fucking _nice_. He should coax Kraglin out of the bedroom more often.

The Hraxian can get a bit iffy when Yondu shoves him up against a wall and starts prying his cock out when they ain't got the walls of the _Eclector_ to hide 'em from prying eyes – of course, Kraglin reckons anywhere on the ship's free game, so long as there ain't too many folk around and it's not the middle of a firefight or nothing. Yondu'd like to remind him that there's plenty of prying eyes to be found on board too, but while Kraglin ain't much of a fan of having strangers knowing his affairs he's practically shameless when it comes to the crew. Either he don't much care what they think, or he gets some perverse enjoyment about squeezing Yondu's balls under the table when they're looking over target specs. (Anyone who thought they knew Kraglin would bet on the former, anyone who _really_ knew him the latter.)

Nothing _too_ distracting, o'course. They're professionals. And an abominable tease he might be, but Kraglin ain't nothing if not disciplined – Yondu knows he'd quit his more flagrant displays the moment he gave the word.

At least, he hopes he would. Otherwise things might get a bit… messy.

But anyway. Point is, there's strangers, and then there's crew. Kraglin tends to shy from the first group and trust anything with the Ravager flame stitched onto its lapels a mite too much in compensation; Yondu, on the other hand, is cynical enough (and has lived through enough mutinies) to at least _attempt_ to control what his men know of his intimate affairs, and overconfident enough in the general public's stupidity to bank on nobody giving a shit about who or what he sticks his dick into.

When folks with vested interest get to know your weak points, those weak points become targets. And so he doesn't think it odd that in some ways, he trusts the scumbags he deals with more than the men he recruits. At least he _knows_ they're gonna stab him in the back.

Strangers and crew, crew and strangers…

Peter, however, has always occupied a space between the two that neither captain nor first mate can reconcile themselves with. Probably something sappy to do with having practically raised the little blighter (although look at the thanks they get for it!)

The door whooshes open with a sound not unlike the hiss of an escaping ejector pod. (Damn, but Yondu wishes they had one of them right now.)

Peter stands there in all his glory. Ginger-blonde curls in a static corona. Clean shaven for once in his life – that Zan Whobrian chick works wonders. The red leather jacket he never quite got out of the habit of wearing is tight over his broad shoulders.

"Hey guys, I… Oh. _Oh_."

* * *

Yondu's seen Peter's eyes scrunch through every phase of grief there is.

He's seen 'em widen in delight when the boy saw his first nebula, billowing out before him like an aurora borealis unrolled over the vast canvas of stars, and narrow up tight when he watched Yondu make a kill. Those are the same eyes that bulged when Horuz grabbed him by the waist and started pointing out his favourite cuts, and rolled feverishly between him and Kraglin that time he contracted spaceflu back on Knowhere and they had to hold a whole fuckin' _hospital_ hostage before they found a doctor with the know-how to treat Terran.

He's seen 'em squinting at the controls of an M-ship. Glaring when they don't do what he wants them to. Then crinkling in joy as he tilts the joystick and sends his precious _Milano_ into a wobbly barrel roll (Yondu clutching the seat next to him and vainly attempting to keep his lunch where it belonged).

Those eyes have seen wonders that no other Terran has, or will. And now… Well, Yondu guesses Peter can add another wonder to his list.

There's an awful silence. The sort that fills a bar after you shoot somebody's face off.

Peter's eyes trek from their shocked expressions to their clasped hands. Then, inexorably, down to the place their bodies are joined. Kraglin jerks to cover himself (although there ain't much need, seein' as Yondu's doing half the job for him). Yondu doesn't bother. Ain't like he's got much in the way of dignity to start with, and hell, he reckons this's been in the works long enough.

He raises a hand. Waves.

"Hey, Quill."

"What? I – I…" Quill sputters inarticulately for a minute. Yondu grabs Kraglin's arm, just in case he's considering pulling out, and patiently waits for the boy to stop choking. "What… _What are you doing?_ "

"What," asks Yondu, "does it look like?" And he bucks his hips, sinking that last inch on.

"Oh my God, oh my God…"

Peter finally overcomes his shock; he whips around to face the wall, and scrubs at his eyes with a vigour that Yondu might've been insulted about if he weren't trying so hard not to burst out laughing. Then Peter pauses. His shoulders stiffen, and he half-turns back to them – only to remember at the last minute and jerk himself still before the motion completes.

"In the Xandarian base of the _Nova Empire_? On the _table_?"

"I know, right?" says Kraglin. Yondu kicks him.

"I cannot fucking _believe_ you-"

"Remember that time you barged into the console room?" Yondu interrupts. The blank look on Peter's face spurs him to elaborate. "And we were naked, and I told ya we had some, ah, _parasitic space lice infection_ and had t'burn our clothes?"

Peter's profile twists into clarification. "Oh – oh yeah. I told Horuz and Horuz told Thrabba and Thrabba told everyone, and the whole crew burnt their leathers, and their sheets and all the spare uniforms too… And wasn't the next trading port like, full of pilgrims or something?" He sniggers. "I remember how they all started screaming when we opened the doors…"

"We didn't have a parasitic space lice infection," says Yondu shortly. Peter's brows momentarily crease, and then his lips pucker up with disgust.

" _Ew_. Seriously?"

"Seriously," Kraglin adds. Not expecting his voice, Peter looks over his shoulder on instinct, then balks and hastily spins again. Boy's still adamantly facing the wall, but the Xandarians have polished their panels so enthusiastically that it's kinda a moot effort. If Yondu can see every expression that flits across Peter's mirrored counterpart, Peter must be seeing the same. Every detail. In high definition.

Thankfully, Yondu doesn't do self-conscious. He lounges, keeping his legs tightly hooked around those of an increasingly red-faced Kraglin, and continues his story as if they're swapping it over tankards of bootlegged gutrot on Knowhere.

"And that time you and Horuz came banging down the corridor because you'd put itching powder in his boots?"

"You told me too," protests Peter weakly. Yondu ignores him.

"Fucking. And when you stomped into my quarters – _without_ my permission, I might add – and started bawlin' me out over your dumb music box? Also fucking. Which really pissed me off, by the way. As did that time when we were havin' our first off day in a _fucking year_ and you had to go and get yourself kidnapped by Kree deserters who wanted a taste of Terran. _And_ when you decided to nick that orb. You know what I was in the middle of when I got that call?"

"Fucking?" Peter hazards. Yondu's lips pull back to reveal a jagged grin.

"So I'm guessin' I don't need to tell ya what we were up to that night you an' Gamora decided to get frisky in the next sack over."

"Oh _God_." The boy presses his hand to his mouth. He looks like he might throw up. Feeling inordinately pleased with himself, Yondu turns his attention back onto Kraglin – who, while he's looking at him with a vague sort of horror, doesn't seem to be as negatively affected in his netherparts as his countenance would imply – and raps smartly on his thigh.

"Did I tell ya to stop, lad?"

"Oh God, oh God, oh _God_ ," Peter says. Kraglin shrugs.

"Sorry, boss." After one last wary glance at Peter, he shifts Yondu's legs into a position where he's not liable to get a foot in the face and snaps his hips roughly forwards. The noise is obscene in the quiet of the room. Not as obscene as the sound Yondu makes though, which exits his throat like it's being squeezed out by a mangle and sends blood rushing into Peter's ears. Peter, with a growing sense of trepidation, hunches his neck into his collar and prays Yondu hasn't noticed.

Of course, that would be too much to ask.

The moan's followed by silence. A silence punctuated by the wet squelch of Kraglin's thrusts (which Peter really, really doesn't want to be thinking about now). A worrying, _contemplative_ silence.

And then Yondu moans again. Louder.

"Harder!" he orders. His voice is exaggeratedly husky, and Kraglin – blush receding in indirect proportion to Quill's as he finds his rhythm and reaches down to tug Yondu's flagging erection back to life – fights back laughter as he obeys.

"Oh yes," he says, adding his own voice to the growing cacophony of grunts, moans and weird high-pitched breathy whines that Yondu seems to think constitutes a decent porn soundtrack. "Oh, _yes_! Captain! Just like that, yeah – yeah!"

"Ain't I the one who's supposed to be sayin' 'just like that'?" Yondu complains. Kraglin shrugs.

"Be my guest, sir."

"Right." He clears his throat. Then – "Ah – Kraglin! Just like that – more! _Harder_ -"

"If I go any harder I really will put you through the table."

"Not quite so hard then – but – oh! Yes! Right there, that's it, hnng-ngah!"

Kraglin snorts.

"Hnng-ngah?"

Opening his eyes just a sliver, Yondu glowers at him from beneath his brow ridges. "Hnng-ngah," he repeats, defiantly. Kraglin nods in appeasement. Keeps thrusting.

"Hnng-ngah."

Peter pinches the skin over the bridge of his nose, and valiantly struggles to control his blush. "God, would you two – would you two just… Look, I actually came here for a _reason_ , not just to get first-seat close ups of your _porno dress rehearsal_ , but this is kinda important, so – oh, would you _please stop fucking him while I'm talking_?"

Guilty as charged, Kraglin slows his pace, shrugging apologetically when Yondu thumps his chest in reproach.

Peter exhales. He can do this. Walking in on what is the closest he's had to a parental figure since mom and grandpa – and what a tragic thought _that_ is; wandering the galaxy with _Yondu_ for a role model – and his first mate in a compromising position?

Mortifying, yes.

But he's Peter Quill. He's fucked his way across the star systems and back again. He does _not_ clam up at the sight of blue alien dick.

Or the image of pink alien dick sliding into blue alien ass. Which is currently reeling through his mind on repeat with neither pause button nor exit key in sight. _God._

Peter takes another deep, calming breath. Thinks of the current situation. Thinks of the myriad of moon-shredding technological monstrosities Rocket could have constructed by now.

Saving them all. And their reputations. That's why he's here. Yes – he's a Guardian now. A Guardian of the Galaxy. Saving things is his job; right after playing nice with galactic big fish, hunting down evil Titans and liberating small but valuable items from their owners when he's sure the Nova Corps' spies are distracted by all them big shiny explosions that have a habit of following him around.

Nope, Peter's gonna find Rocket before he sets anything irreplaceable on fire. And no _antics_ on Yondu and Kraglin's part are going to divert him.

Gross antics at that. Because seriously – Dey put his _hands_ on that table. _Nova Prime_ put her hands on that table. There has to be a law against that somewhere, and not just the basic principles of hygiene and human decency; he'd figured out that the Ravagers are lacking those eons ago.

Peter steels himself, reminds himself again of the atrocities Rocket can commit if left alone for five minutes with a room full of bust-up mechanics and half a pocket of lint, and turns to face his worst nightmare.

He tries to look Yondu in the eyes. He really does. But Kraglin keeps _moving_ – just in increments, grinding in place really; but it's obviously doing _something_ because Yondu's grin's gone all slack and those wicked red eyes are looking a mite glazed over.

"I need you to help me find Rocket," he begins.

Kraglin and Yondu remain quiet, waiting for him to go on. So far, so good. Peter coughs into his hand.

"He's, uh, wandered off. Again. And he's really not to be trusted alone, especially not around prosthetic limbs. Or toupees. Or corrosives, or alcohol, or _anything_ flammable, and… Look." He spreads his arms, blinking in his determination to keep his gaze above their respective belt lines. Which would be so much easier if they were wearing belts. Or pants. "We're gonna be working as a team, right? Might as well start acting like one sooner rather than later."

They both observe him neutrally, and for a moment, Peter actually thinks he's gotten through to them.

Then Yondu throws his head back with an extravagant gasp (which, judging from the way Kraglin's smirking, might not be quite so hyperbolized as he'd have Peter believe). Peter spins round faster than if he'd had a ripcord attached to his jet boots.

"Guys! Seriously!" There's a loud moan. Peter winces, wondering how high he's going to have to tilt his alcohol-to-blood ratio before all of this fades into the comfortable recesses of blackout amnesia. Probably past fatal levels. Right now, that doesn't seem like such a horrible prospect. "Y'know, I'm actually starting to hope he blows us up."

"Sharin' a ship with you's gonna be a bundle of laughs," says Yondu. "Imagine – me, him… Lotsa vaguely horizontal surfaces –"

Peter's mouth snaps shut. He looks like he's going to cry.

"I think ya broke him, captain," says Kraglin dryly. There's a moment of vivid relief when he pulls out – Yondu griping and digging his toes into the most vulnerable body parts he can reach. But then he takes hold of Yondu's ankles and pushes them up and back, folding the Centaurian neatly in half and reinserting himself directly between his strong blue thighs. This is an action to which the table protests, Yondu vocally states his approval, and Peter makes a tiny horrified noise in the back of his throat. "I mean, we musta fucked on every inch of that goddamned ship. And all the M-ships. Which, considerin' the _Milano_ 's second-hand…"

Peter blanches. His mouth opens and shuts like a guppy out of water.

"Huh." Yondu observes him from his new topsy-turvy position with malevolent glee. "Best we don't tell him what we did with that troll doll he left us, huh?"

That's the final straw.

Peter shakes back into life with a vehement shudder. Then he turns stiffly to the door and storms out. He's never going to touch anything on the _Eclector_ ever again. Not without fully fumigating, sterilizing and scouring it with gamma radiation.

"Shut the door on your way out!" shouts Yondu after him. Then tilts his head and raises his brow ridges expectantly at Kraglin. They last about five seconds before dissolving into laughter.

"Troll doll?" Kraglin wheezes. "The fuck was that 'bout the _troll doll_?"

"I ain't gotta clue," says Yondu proudly. "But it worked, didn't it?"

That it did. Boy'll be shuddering whenever he looks their way for _months_. But with that done and dusted, and Yondu's source of amusement sorted for what's shaping up to be one fucking long road-trip – well, there's still a certain business to be settled.

Two certain businesses.

One blue, one red veering on purple towards the tip, neither showing any inclination to go down.

Kraglin looks at Yondu and Yondu looks at Kraglin. Kraglin turns to eye the pair of trousers he's slung triumphantly over the headrest of Nova Prime's chair. Yondu hums, considers, and shakes his head.

What the hell. They're seeing this one through to the end.

It seems like a day for first times – first time workin' an official Nova-sanctioned job, first time shakin' paws with Nova Prime. First time Peter walkin' in on them doing the nasty… Okay, maybe not that last one. But whatever – there ain't no time like the present to add 'first time getting off on a Xandarian conference table' to the list. And so, they get on with it.

"So," says Kraglin conversationally. He's leaning forwards, Yondu's cock filling his calloused palm. His elbow's squashed awkwardly between them, but that ain't stopping him from moving in fast, smooth tugs that have Yondu's feet twitching where they're hiked up over his first mate's skinny shoulders. When his voice percolates the shimmery haze that's filling the cavity usually housed by Yondu's brain, Kraglin has to jerk back to avoid getting a heel in the eye. "We got us a long trip ahead. Ravagers, Guardians, Nova… I dunno, Captain. They're gonna keep us on our toes." It's not exactly the time for small-talk – Yondu can feel an orgasm teetering on the brink, ready to come cascading down and smash through him. Or at least it would if Kraglin would just _keep moving_ –

"Yeah," he grunts. Runs his cool fingers over Kraglin's stomach and up his ribs, mapping every familiar ridge and indent. "So what?"

"What m'saying is…" Kraglin pushes his weight forwards, forcing Yondu's spine into a curve that's near-painful. Sweat glistening along the ropy tendons in his neck, he licks a stripe up Yondu's clavicle and leans in close enough to kiss. Half-expecting one, Yondu parts his lips and strains an inch closer. Kraglin indulges him, but pulls back after half a second so that he can complete his sentence in a whisper against his skin. "How 'bout we spend it seein' how many times we can fuck in the brat's ship before he realises what we're up to?"

It's evil.

It's genius.

It'll destroy any trust in the world that Quill's managed to cling to.

Yondu loves it.

" _Now_ you're talkin'," he growls, and grabs Kraglin by the ears so that he can give him the kiss he deserves.

* * *

 **Remember, I'm Write_Like_An_American on AO3! If you've followed me this far, you might as well check out my account there for the ongoing mid-quels to this story. (Warning - will include nasty non-con; all will be clearly marked and easily avoidable, but still read at your own risk. I blame the absurd amounts of exam stress I was under when I wrote it - exams really bring out the sadist in me! D:)**

 **I'm also lairofthebunyip on tumblr (sorry for the multitude of internet identities). You're more than welcome to come say hi/drop off some Kragdu prompts for me over there. I'd love to follow a few more Guardians fans. :3**

 **As always, please read and review. I read every single one, no matter how small. They always perk me up! So lets return to that delightful old cliche - please feed your hungry author~ xxx**


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